“It became a running joke how much my siblings and I hated it”: The Sound of Christmas to Me | music

Cockayne Soul – Death Christmas

I’m always fascinated by the ways my generation is able to participate in the circulation of music. Amateur TikTok edits are reviving forgotten gems and turning obscure stars into sensations; Local producers make entire albums if their favorite rapper doesn’t release enough. Such is the case with Doom Xmas, the brainchild of Grammy Award-winning Spanish producer Cookin’ Soul, which remakes the work of the late rapper MF Doom into Christmas music. There are scruffy Grinch soundtracks, frenetic Christmas Latin riffs, and a chopped-up and distorted Nat King Cole that will change the way you hear a Christmas song.

It’s an Internet cult classic. Every Christmas, a group of underground rap fans take to the comments sections to write something like: “They’re already playing Mariah, and I’m blasting death!” Although it’s contraband, the tape has a strangely festive atmosphere: it’s a blow to humanity in the wake of the AI ​​music icon, and a reminder that society is rooting for it, especially at Christmas. Archie Ford

Mariah Carey

The one constant in all my essential Christmas memories is Mariah Carey. The oldest is when we were stuck in traffic, and I was so small that I couldn’t see anything through the car windows except the changing lights above. Over the radio, Carrie sings “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” — much more exciting than my nursery’s version of “Away in a Manger.” Years later, I was back in the car – this time with a friend who had just passed his driving test. We spend lunchtime wandering the residential streets near our sixth form school, windows open, blasting All I Want for Christmas Is You. That evening, his mother received an email from the school warning her that her son “should stop trying to impress girls.” (He’s gay.) Then there’s decorating the Christmas tree with my now-husband for the first time. Carrie’s hip-hop version – Here Comes Santa Claus was playing. It bothered me because I only listened to “funky” Christmas songs. What did he expect, boatman? It’s been a go-to ever since. Bometsi olives

Various artists – Chante, C’est Noël

In 2003, I was 14, my middle brother was 12, and five years younger than me. That Christmas, we took our first trip to Disneyland Paris. I remember it being so cold that coming home with fewer fingers seemed like a real possibility, and the Indiana Jones roller coaster was so dead that my middle brother and I rode it twice in a row — and that hellish song.

There is a daily parade in the park, and from early November, it is Christmas-themed. That year, its soundtrack was the power-chord thrilling nightmare of Chante, C’est Noël, which I now realize was a kind of Schlager-adjacent choral toothache. It became a running joke how much my brothers and I hated the song, one that my father cashed in on by secretly and repeatedly buying the CD, happily We blast it on the long drive home, as well as on several subsequent car trips, despite our disapproving cries. To this day, the intro bells and the enthusiastic scream of “CHANTE!” It can still make us older kids recoil in horror. Laura Snaps

El Ves – Velez Navidad

Thanks to its prominent place on many Christmas playlists on streaming services, José Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad has become a staple of celebrations in the UK, despite the country’s general resistance to foreign-language music: it reached the Top 20 here for the first time last year. But growing up in the Midlands in the 1990s, the closest we got to Latin culture was staring at a hot plate of restaurant fajitas, and so I didn’t hear Feliz Navidad until a cover version was included in a 2000 Christmas compilation by independent radio station XFM. It’s by El Vez, a Latin Elvis impersonator who sings the chorus of “I Want to Wish You a Merry Christmas” like a man lunging at audience members, grabbing the lapels of their jackets and leaving them embroidered with his sweat. When I finally heard Feliciano’s version, I couldn’t help but feel a bit harsh and mannered by comparison, so I always turn to El Vez’s version instead, accusing me of the giddiness of a child tearing up what Santa left for him. Ben Beaumont Thomas

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

We don’t really think of Bohemian Rhapsody as a Christmas song, even though it was a No. 1 Christmas song twice, in 1975 and after Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991. The first time, I was four years old, so it’s a testament to how wonderful Bohemian Rhapsody sounds that I still remember it, albeit completely mixed up in my head with the way the Christmas tree in our hall looked at night: a real 1970s tree – all artificial. Pride, with silver tinsel branches – with its blue and red lights reflecting off the glass front door and in the ornaments, which were reflecting like disco balls. I distinctly remember sitting on the stairs after Top of the Pops had finished, my head still full of bohemian odyssey, staring up at the tree, lost in the glittering wonder of it all, the theme music from The Good Life – which must have been playing then – coming from the living room. It seemed magical: the way Christmas is supposed to feel, but rarely ever does. Alexis Petridis

Lena Horne – Jingle All the Way

The Christmas soundtrack in our house comes with a generous amount of cheese – lounge, light jazz, and the more modern end of easy listening; Laid-back holiday heroes like Dean Martin, Count Basie, Julie London, Jimmy McGriff, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis, Peggy Lee, Lou Rawls and Nat King Cole cycle through different arrangements of the same dozen or so songs. It’s like welcoming old friends back. You don’t get more in the Christmas spirit than Lena Horne’s “Jingle All the Way,” a peppy take on the Jingle Bells song with an arrangement best described as “big band overdub.” Try to stand still. Or for those who are unfortunately feeling too fresh, there’s always Miles Davis’ wonderfully satirical Blue Christmas (To Whom It May Concern). Sample lyric: “The sanitary pavement conditions are very, very tender…” For years now, ’60s lounge songs have spanned our festive spectrum and made sense of Christmas in a way that only a dry martini could hope to. Lloyd Bradley

Christina Rossetti/Gustav Holst – In the bleak midwinter

In the 1950s, Christmas with my mother in the rickety old house we used to drive around meant cozying up by the fireplace, mother’s jokes and scares, and poorly wrapped but treasured presents. We shared superstitious, God-free minds, but Rossetti/Holst’s beautiful hymn to a bleak midwinter struck me, both for its snow-covered setting and the narrator’s childish desire to please the fantastic powers. I’ve sometimes played it on guitar at seasonal neighbours’ gatherings, usually with the introduction – for a cheap laugh, not a personal revelation – “It doesn’t come any more blues than my version.” My guitar teacher, the great Wes Montgomery, was also the wormhole that changed my life into the multiverse of jazz – his 1966 Christmas cover of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Hammond maestro Jimmy Smith is corny but to fans, it’s not history. John Fordham