Often times Christmas songs are covered numerous times as time passes along, new recording artists will give their rendition to old classics. Some singers will pen their own and create a new Christmas standard.
With traditional Christmas songs like Jingle Bells, the original is forgotten and one hears instrumentals to vocal versions by different artists.
However there are Christmas songs in which the original is the most well known and gets the most radio airplay.
Rock Around The Christmas Tree-Brenda Lee
Jingle Bell Rock-Bobby Helms
3.Last Christmas-Wham
4.All I Want For Christmas Is You-Mariah Carey
Little Saint Nick-Beach Boys
6.Wonderful Christmas Time-Paul McCartney
“Happy X-mas (War is Over)” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
“Father Christmas” by the Kinks
“Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Anymore)” by the Ramones
I forget the name of that song by Shane McGowan and Kirsty McColl; maybe “Christmas in New York”?
Bing Crosby’s versions of White Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Christmas In Killarney are the ones I really like. Modern covers of these three just don’t sound right.
Yes, thank you for including that one. While it’s not a song I’m particularly fond of (or not fond of either), I absolutely LOATHE the version some pop tart put out a few years ago.
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Nobody will ever do it better than Darlene Love. This year saw the end of an era as she sang this for the last time on the David Letterman show.
This. The covers range from “meh” to “good lord make it stop”. And whoever changed the lyric to “outer-space convertible” needs to be taken out and flogged. I’d think a convertible would be a really terrible idea for a spacecraft…
The Gene Autry version of Rudolph is still the standard, I think. The only place you really hear the Rankin-Bass version is on the special itself.
Also, Elvis’s Blue Christmas. The only really stand-out cover is the Bob Rivers Porky Pig one.
Bob Rivers is a category unto himself in regard to this question, though.
Although legally titles and concepts aren’t protected by copyright, I would argue that morally this is a blatant rip-off of the far superior song of the same name by Vince Vance and the Valiants, released 5 years earlier. It is reportedly the most played Christmas song on country stations, even though it’s more of a 60s girl group style than country. It also gets a lot of play on adult contemporary stations.