The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Don't play it around sensative folks:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBC6f4BrnZw

I read an article a few years ago that opined only one new Christmas song had been added to the "Christmas standards" list in the last half century.  i.e., not talking about all the new Christmas songs that appear on newer artists' Christmas albums that most people don't know, and that artist and version is the only one that exists for that song.  It's referring to something like "Silent Night" which everybody knows and has most often has been covered by many artists.  Something added to the Christmas lexicon of the culture.  

It argued that only Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is the only standard added in recent years.  I think that's correct despite the fact that as far as I know, nobody else has covered that song.  But her version is so ubiquitous and recognized by nearly everyone, and is so featured in radio rotation every bit as much as the other standards, that I think it does qualify.  

However.  I would argue that Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene's "Mary Did You Know" also belongs in the Christmas Standards list.  I don't know if it was written with Christmas in mind but I do know it first appeared on an album that was not a Christmas record.  But since that time several major artists have covered the song and because it works as a Christmas song, it has been used as such.  It's not as pervasive or recognizable (imo) as Carey's song, but it's present enough that I think it has also entered the hard-to-break-into Christmas Standards club.  

Can you think of any other new(ish) songs that deserve to be added to the list?

Yeah I guess it depends on how loosely we are defining "recently."  If we're talking "anything newer than the 40s/50s" (which is the era when a TON of the Christmas standards were estalished), then I'd say there were definitely some additions in the 80s, like Wham's "Last Christmas."

But it does get pretty tough to identify more than a couple of them, and I'd agree that Mariah Cary's "All I Want for Christmas is You" is the only major "new" one and even that one, is what, two decades old now?

"Mary Did You Know" is a great song but I really only hear it in religious contexts, I don't often hear it in the more secular environments like shopping mall playlists, so I'm not sure I'd  agree it's made the leap to "Christmas Standard."

Yeah that Jackson 5 version of Santa Claus is Coming To Town is pretty ubiquitous.  

You wanna know a couple of "standards" that I really don't like?  "Santa Baby", and "I'm Getting Nothin' For Christmas".  Any time I hear one of those two songs, it's an immediate "nope out" for me.

My kids both know Wham.  It shows up on the various app-curated Spotify or Amazon music playlists they choose.  

Meredith Wilson is a native of Mason City, Iowa, and a very accomplished playwright, composer, and bandleader. He's the man who wrote the 1957 Broadway hit "The Music Man" and six years earlier he wrote a famous Christmas song.

In 1951, Wilson wrote "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas", a song that would become a Christmas standard. The song has been recorded more than 200 times over the years, but two of the most famous versions were done the very year it was written.

On September 18, 1951, Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters and Mitchell Ayres and His Orchestra recorded the song.


https://youtu.be/A4zBSnMhvI0

Read More: Iowa Man Wrote a Famous Christmas Song We All Love | https://k923.fm/ixp/675/p/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-meredith-wilson/?fbclid=IwAR0GaEBUMMQmkF0v_6vxkbpA2ULRMfBZRViR_REKZYEJ80Qxua45Aloy-mU&utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral