Dec. 9, 2009

I’m not what you would call a big fan of Christmas albums by famous pop stars, for two very solid reasons:

1.) Famous pop stars are frequently untalented.
2.) Famous pop stars couldn’t care less about you and your stupid Christmas.

Sure, there might be three or four corn-fed Disney performers out there who get genuinely misty-eyed over the thought of a glowing newborn in a rickety manger. But beyond that, let’s just call it unlikely that all Mr. Top-o-the-Charts really wants this Christmas season is to hip his fans to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as opposed to doing ecstasy and humping a mini-skirted groupie in the hallway at the Chateau Marmont.

As for the female of the species, if your job description includes covering your nipples with blue sparkles and making convincing “I’m coming” sounds over a programmed drum beat, Christianity-based grandstanding probably shouldn’t be on your to-do list.

Let’s not kid ourselves just this once. Christmas albums are released to ensure that people who already have way too much money will be able to collect even more of it during a time of year when people who have no money at all feel particularly compelled to spend it. And if the pop star in question decides to steal the spotlight once and for all from that insufferable egomaniac Jesus Christ, listening to these albums can get decidedly surreal.

So, because everyone has to make a buck, there’s stiff competition for the crown of the most hellishly poppified Christmas song ever recorded. When I worked in record stores years ago, I actually used to look forward to hearing how bad the new Christmas releases would be. Corny soul covers, ironically amped-up renditions of beloved carols, monotone spoken word passages read straight from a script, grown women singing in theoretically “cute” little girl voices...the variations are limitless.

But nothing I encountered back in the day even comes close to a holiday recording from the year 2000 that I somehow stumbled upon a couple months ago. This baby is the “Citizen Kane” of wrong-headed Christmas music, a track so utterly void of redeemable qualities it can actually embarrass your ears.

Strangely enough, the young woman singing it has a great set of pipes, which I suppose qualifies her to one degree or another as “talented.” But on this particular tune - and, let’s face it, on virtually every tune she’s ever recorded - she’s hamstrung by an absolutely heroic lack of taste that makes her the next best thing to a pleather-jacketed pink flamingo hammered into the sod in front of a double-wide trailer. It's not enough to say she sounds pleased with herself when she sings. She sounds like she wants to have sex with herself.

So, without further ado...ladies and gentlemen…(whispering reverently) Ms. Christina Aguilera, with “Oh Holy Night."

Oh my God! Or should I say, “Whhhooooaaaaa-hoooooo-whaaaaaaaaaaa-heeeeee-hooooo-ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooheeeeeeeeeooooooooowoooooo. God”

Until Aguilera’s apparently astounding soulfulness bitch-slapped me into the 21st century, I had no idea the word “night” contained 14 syllables…or that every word contains 14 syllables. I’ve always said, though, that you’re not really reciting the Lord’s Prayer until you’ve done it with somebody playing a Hammond B-3 organ behind you, so that was good to hear. I also like the spontaneous (i.e. “prepared days in advance”) giggle when the band starts gettin’ all funky on her, like now she’ll be able to drop the formalities and cut loose a bit.

I guess you could argue the song works, though. I must have said “Jesus Christ” twenty times when I first listened to it.

                                                ***

I hate to end it with that, so let’s cleanse our holiday palates a bit, shall we? Seek, as they say, and ye shall find. Leave it to everybody’s favorite wandering Jew, Bob Dylan, to come up with a genuine Christmas classic, then shoot a rip-roaring video (co-starring Santa Claus, no less) to accompany it.

Dylan, as you may know, started life as preternaturally wise Jewish kid, just like Jesus. Madman poet/radical genius or not, Dylan's really little Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, MN. Bobby's dad, Abe, owned an appliance store, and in all likelihood could get it for you wholesale. Bobby, however, rightfully assumed he was not made to be a Maytag salesman, so he grabbed his guitar and Woody Guthrie impersonation and lit out for New York in 1961. You know the rest of the story, although no one would blame you if you quit being interested some time around 1980.

At that point, Dylan, who had previously eaten amphetamines like they were Jolly Ranchers, kicked the demon cocaine, and in a move that was perverse even by his standards promptly became a born again Christian, the kind that gleefully tells people they’ll fry in hell for not being exactly like him. Dylan’s fans were appalled, for the most part. But I always assumed it was the lack of drugs talking.

Anyway, Zimmy eventually got back to being Jewish (or something damn near it) about 25 years ago, and the yarmulke appears to have stuck. But now, just to confuse things even further, he’s celebrating Christmas again in a manner that’s so decidedly cockeyed, it has to be at least a partial joke.

Dylan's new album, “Christmas in the Heart,” is designed to raise money for charity, and I’m all for that. The fact that the album is as ghastly as anything Dylan has ever recorded, however, suggests that those charities might be wise to wait until next year.

There are moments on this record where Dylan sounds like he’s literally gargling Christmas carols. I mean really, really bad stuff. But, completely out of nowhere, he also rips off a polka version of “Must Be Santa Claus” that oozes exactly the kind of unbridled rambunctiousness that America needs this Christmas season. Slap on your Rudolph nose and get a load of this!

Something’s obviously in the eggnog, and God only knows what’s up with the wig. But that's a Christmas song.

Paul Tatara