I have never heard “Christmas Shoes”
After that bit from Patton Oswalt I now pray I never will.
During my decades in radio, I worked for not one but two stations that did the wall-to-wall Christmas flip. Generally. I enjoyed the change. There were songs I liked (monitor turned up), songs I didn’t like (monitor turned down), and songs I didn’t care about one way or the other. The Mariah Carey tune fell into that category.
Two songs, however, fell into the monitor-all-the-way-down category. “Hey Santa” by Carney and Wendy Wilson. (I was subjected to their awful screeching twice while shopping yesterday.) And any version of “Baby Please Come Home.” U2 or Darlene Love, that incessant Baaaaybee Pleeez Come Home repeatedly screamed over and over just drives me up a wall.
No Christmas is complete for me until I’ve played this a few times.
Sadly I’ve never heard it played in public. I’m surrounded by Philistines!
Interesting article that shows how musically adept the song it:
When writing “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey and her collaborator, Walter Afanasieff, did something unusual: They eschewed the prevailing impulse to restrict the song’s architecture to simple triads (three-note chords) and diatonic melodies (using only notes from the song’s key signature) — which are the basic building blocks of most modern pop music. Instead, they employed compositional elements of classic songs from the mid-20th Century — elements we rarely hear in the pop music written during the last three decades, Christmas or otherwise. These elements are steeped in 1940s jazz vocabulary and 19th Century European Romanticism, so they subtly conjure a bygone era. And therein lies the crucial factor. The harmony in “All I Want For Christmas” invokes the main ingredient that makes those Christmas standards “feel” like Christmas: nostalgia .
Note that her song is again- #1.
None of that is particular notable to me: they wrote a throwback song. Big whoop. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who has played through or listened to jazz standards/Great American Songbook pieces.
This whole paragraph made me fall madly in love with you. I rationally adore Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as I very rationally hate Love, Actually – what a turd.
I love All I Want for Christmas Is You and Love, Actually, both. At the same time. And separately.
And for some more treacly wonderfulness:
I started to watch her on Colbert, and stopped shortly after she claimed that she had never claimed to be “the Queen of Christmas”.
I’ve never heard her claim to be the Angel Of Music or the Pumpkin King.
I bloody love Macca, but my god yes that song is an abomination.
That is hilarious, as was the reaction of our two cats! They both looked at us like “What the hell?!!!”
Hehehe, my favorite meme on the subject:
That was pretty typical of the few times I’ve seen her being interviewed: instant, continuous self-promotion.
I love all Christmas music, including “All I Want for Xmas Is You”, for what it’s worth. But can’t stand M.C. And i associate that song with Love, Actually because that’s the first place I ever heard it. I thought it was original to the movie.
Here’s my favorite version of the song (which I don’t hate at all, but I I do get tired of the over-produced version we hear interminably during the holiday season each year):
It’s the one with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots and some cute kids who pop up to sing back-up. The band plays some toy instruments and there’s no auto-tune effects.
That’s not really that far off from reality, except it was “Get McCartney a synth and a metric fuckton of weed and lock him in his studio in Africa for a couple of days”. The fact that Paul was stoned off his tits the whole time he was writing it explains a lot.
That IS wonderful! Thanks 
I like “All I Want For Christmas Is You” but in small amounts. Luckily, that’s how I seem to receive it.
There’s no logic to it, but this year Wonderful Christmastime is the song of the season at Houtham Manor — a song that hurt my ears for 30 years suddenly seems like zen brilliance.
Last year I gave it a single focused listening and decided the descending melody line behind “A choir of children…” was kinda nice, so maybe the tune wasn’t worthless. This year I was checking out at Home Depot, heard a 10 seconds snatch of Xmas music and thought, Wow that’s powerful, what carol is that?
And now both I and my (more musically sophisticated) wife have been singing the damn song multiple times a day as we wander round the house. I’m still wary about the repetitive “Simply having” hook, but other parts charm me.
To lift a glass
Oh, and don’t look down
—That neatly separates the sheep of Holiday Cheer from the goats of Seasonal Depression.
The choir of children sing their song
They practiced all year long
—It’s another bittersweet line, and feels both completely contemporary and deeply traditional.
The Ding Dong part is just okay, but it offers musicians and arrangers an easy section for improvisation and expansion.
Maybe next year I’ll hate the song again, but for now I’m checking out the covers on Youtube, and wishing there were more. Beware! It could happen to you.
The easiest version to like is the 90-second a cappella cover from Fallon and the Roots.
Well, that was horrifying.
Stranger