As I’ve already noted, the number of legit Christmas songs is pretty small. There are a few dozen that everyone knows, like “Silent Night,” and another handful of lesser-known fringe songs like “The Christmas Waltz” or the execrable “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”
Most Christmas songs seem to hark back to Edenic visions of an agrarian past: sleigh rides, Farmer Brown, Yuletide carols being sung by a choir. None of these reflect my own Christmas memories, though, and that’s why my favorite Christmas standard is “Silver Bells.” “It’s Christmastime in the city” is a vision I can get behind, people dressed up and cheery lights in store windows and front yards. Add to that the harmonies of The Living Sisters, as tight and inviting as the Andrews Sisters before them, and today’s song is a stunner:
My only quibble with this song is the bizarrely ham-fisted second line of the first verse: “In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas.” In a song that is otherwise so conscientious and chipper about creating a scene through concrete, evocative details, that line feels like part of rushed a first-draft that someone forgot to change before publication. It’s always mystified me that it was left in when there are so many other possible lines—“all the shop windows offer their plenty,” off the top of my head—that could have conveyed the point with the same delicacy used in the rest of the song.
That’s nitpicking though, and I’m happy to put up it with in exchange for the rest of this one.
This song also leads to a daisy-chain of great things that I want to share with you.
I first learned of The Living Sisters by seeking out music by Inara George, because I adored her work on the soundtrack to The Minus Man. That restrained, unsettling film was written and directed by the great Hampton Fancher, who also wrote the screenplay for Blade Runner. Wikipedia describes Fancher as “flamenco dancer, actor, and Blade Runner screenwriter” and that is the kind of bio we should all aspire to.
There is a riveting 2017 documentary about Hampton Fancher called Escapes, directed by Michael Almereyda. If you’re not familiar with Almereyda, I envy you the opportunity to explore his oeuvre for the first time. He directed the 2000 Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke (do not miss Bill Murray as Polonius), as well as 2005’s William Eggleston in the Real World which I was lucky enough to see at the Indie Memphis Film Festival that year. His films are absolutely worth looking for.
No notes today, I think I put everything in the body. Onward!
First, LL and I loved that version of Hamlet, set in corporate offices. Julia Stiles as Ophelia. Second, a lovely "Silver Bells." I think my favorite modern Christmas song is "The Christmas Song," written in 1945 by Roberts Wells and Mel Torme. Nat King Cole recorded it four times, but I think it's Mel Torme's rendition that we usually hear. Again, this is a song with specific details that strike to the heart of our feelings about this fraught holiday. There's something a bit melancholy about it. btw, I always make a distinction between Christmas Carols and Christmas songs.