Christmas Desert Island Discs #2 – Mrs Routledge
1. Stay Another Day – East 17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mg7ok8dmDU
I am usually not a great fan of Christmas songs that don’t have anything to do with Christmas (because that makes them…well…just songs) however, this time of year wouldn’t be complete for me without this song. I was 7 when this song was Christmas number 1 and I remember singing along to it when I watched it on Top of the Pops. I always thought the song was beautiful but it was a few years later that I discovered that it had been written by Tony Mortimer for his brother who had committed suicide and that added extra poignancy. In comparison to Take That’s “clean cut” boy band image, East 17 were more seen as the “bad boys” of pop and so it was a bit of a change in image for them releasing a ballad.
Even though I love the song, I must say the video is truly, laughably awful. Even by 90s standards; terrible fashion faux pas, terrible “dancing” and terrible effects. If you have never seen the video but you like the song, I advise you not to watch it because it will never be the same for you…
2. Driving Home For Christmas – Chris Rea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THcbQyFtCqg
This is one of the best Christmas songs for me because I always play it when I’m going home (surprisingly!) and it’s the moment when I know I can actually start to relax. When I was little, my parents used to play it loads (mainly because my mum loved Chris Rea) and since I “left” home at 18, no matter where I’ve been, Nottingham, Clermont-Ferrand, Garswood, Ipswich, even when I was living only on the other side of Chorley, I’ve played this song as I’ve gone home for Christmas. In recent years, as I’ve driven home to Chorley for Christmas, I’ve rung my mum up as I’ve left the motorway so that we can sing it together as I turn the corner to my parents’ house and my mum has been standing at the window waiting for me. There’s no place like home…
3. Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid (1984)
And yes, the version matters. There are 4 versions in fact (I have listened to all of them and watched all the videos) and this is the one I like the most. I found a video of all four versions playing at the same time and it’s interesting (and annoying in equal amounts) to look at the differences in terms of who is singing, how they are singing and how celebrities play up to the camera, especially when they are surrounded by other celebrities who threaten to steal their limelight! I remember when Band Aid 20 came out and I thought it would be much better than the original because some of my favourite singers were going to be singing on it…how naïve.
The original gives me goosebumps, especially after the key change!
4. A Spaceman Came Travelling – Chris de Burgh
Beautiful song! It doesn’t sound like a very Christmassy song from the title but it actually addresses the Christmas story, though in a very different way. Chris de Burgh read Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken. The book made him think “what if the star of Bethlehem was a space craft and what if there is a benevolent being or entity in the universe keeping an eye on the world and our foolish things that we do to each other?” He imagined “the nativity scene, the thing hovering over and I could see the shepherds in the fields and this weird, ethereal music was drifting into the air and they were ‘what the heck is that’?” The harmony is glorious and the music is twinkly and I love it.
5. Once upon a Christmas Song – Geraldine McQueen (a.k.a. Peter Kay)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kmPz5IbU90
Geraldine McQueen is a fictional singer, played by the comedian Peter Kay, who won a fictional/parody talent show (Britain’s Got the Pop Factor… and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice) in 2008. The whole idea of the show was to parody reality talent shows and the ways and reasons people won – it was hilarious.
The video of this song was filmed from a float driving through the middle of Bolton, where I went to school, where the people filming the video ran ahead going into shops to get everyone onto the street and had handed out tinsel and accessories to anyone and everyone they could find to wave around as they went past. My friend was devastated because she missed being in the video because her parking was about to run out and she had to go and move her car!
At a time when “Christmas” songs had been thin on the ground, this song is a call for a return of Christmassy Christmas songs. Songs that you can sing over and over and over again…it’s fun, catchy and makes me smile every time I hear it!
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