Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
Looking back on remembered good times. Looking forward to possible great times. Present times uncertain. So have yourself a merry little christmas, now.
Bitter sweet. A nice counterpoint to the all the jolly joyousness. All the more poignent that it was written in 1944. Always makes me feel thankful for what I have, now.
I’m a bad atheist because I like a lot of the tradition religious songs, mostly because I was in a folk group at church (when I went to church) and these were the songs I liked to sing.
Adeste Fidelis (O Come All Ye Faithful - in Latin)
O Holy Night (Can’t hit the high note but admire those who can)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
Carol of the Bells
Wrong, dude - just plain wrong.
Regards,
Shodan
I respectfully disagree. Dion may not be as bad as some, but Pavarotti wipes the floor with her and Pavarotti and Domingo make her sound like a mangy alley cat with asthma.
:dubious: Dion?
I agree with the sentiment but question the example.
I don’t think Pavarotti wipes the floor with any of these:
I also like O Holy Night. My favorites are the Johnny Mathis version and, for entirely different reasons, the one linked here.
ALMOST any version of Carol of the Bells is good, too. (I have to say “almost” because of the Mannheim Steamroller version. It was going along OK until they put the stupidest interlude in the history of music into it.)
I’m not a big fan of most Christian music, but Casting Crowns does a spectacular version of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” They also do a really nice original Christmas tune called “While You Were Sleeping.”
A few other original tunes I like quite a bit are “Emmanuel, God With Us” by Amy Grant, “25th December” by Everything But the Girl, and “Old City Bar” by TSO.
Yes, Dion, without even a hint of apology. I think she has a spectacular voice, and I have thought so since The Power of Love came out.
Listen to the clip again, especially to the high note at the end. Then contrast it (if you like) to this, where the singer (if you can believe it) is over-selling the song. I wouldn’t have thought over-selling was possible with Oh Holy Night, and to be fair to Phelps (don’t worry, it’s no relation) I think this is just his style.
But compare that to the pure, unadorned beauty of the high notes in the Dion cover of the song. Just a little embellishment, just a little trace in the high note leading up to the final one, just to show that this is not all, and that there is a treat coming up when she reaches back and goes for it. And* nails* it.
And then almost my favorite part of clips like this, in live performance - the end of the song, a half second of silence - and then the audience goes crazy.
To have been in the presence of such beauty is to have held the hand of God. A Holy Night indeed.
Merry Christmas.
Regards,
Shodan
In Dulce Jubilo
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
O Come O Come Emmanuel
Oh Holy Night
Carol of the Bells
Ave Maria
I like a lot of Christmas music.
“Good King Wenceslas” is great IF you sing all five verses, not the first, third, and fifth. The second and fourth fill out the story, and make it plain that the king was aware of his own virtue.
“The Angel Gabriel to Mary Came” is one of my favorites. In church we often sing it during Advent, but the hymnal actually has it in the section for “Other Occasions”, in this case specifically the feast of the Annunciation in March.
“What Child is This?” is one of my favorites, if each verse has it’s own chorus, as it was originally written. I’m ticked that our hymnal has followed the “nicey nice” trend of ending each of the three verses with the same chorus.
And of course “Oh Holy NIght” which many posters have already mentioned.
I like “The Holly and the Ivy.”
“Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues.