It's record labels' last chance to recoup any money they wasted this year. Their desperation might explain the dire state of the Yuletide single, writes Kevin Courtney.
Does the music industry know it's Christmas? Of course it does: 'tis the season when tills ring out in record shops and labels reap the rewards of selling Christmas singles, albums and compilations, retrospective box sets, DVDs and seasonal reissues.
It's their last chance to recoup the costs of suing 12-year-olds for downloading Britney Spears tracks, promoting hopeless novelty acts and one-hit wonders and putting out whingeing press releases about Internet piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing. It's the one time of the year that sales of Cliff Richard, Dean Martin, Chris De Burgh and Curtlestown Church Choir are sure to go up and CD covers can proudly display the C-word without having to sport a parental-advisory sticker.
It's also the time of the year when artists who haven't been heard of in ages can pop up with a seasonal single and - hey presto - it's like they never went away. This year we have new Christmas singles by Donny Osmond (shouldn't he be using the more dignified Donald at this stage?) and Aled Jones (alas, his voice has since broken). We even have the return of the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, performing his song Father & Son with Ronan Keating, who had a hit with it as a member of Boyzone. This new version by Keating and Yusuf Islam was the favourite for Christmas number one, even though it's not a Christmas song and Islam isn't one for celebrating the day that's in it.
The big Christmas single this year is Band Aid 20's version of Do They Know It's Christmas?, featuring the massed voices of Chris Martin of Coldplay, Robbie Williams, Dido, Dizzee Rascal, Blue, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness and Bono. The original version is the biggest UK Christmas hit of all time (the UK charts hadn't started when Bing Crosby released the biggest-selling Christmas song of all time, White Christmas), but the 2004 version is unlikely to outsell its two predecessors (there was another version in 1989, featuring the likes of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan), partly because we've become numbed to other people's suffering, thanks to round-the-clock news coverage that presents humanitarian disasters as if they were some kind of reality- television show, but mostly because people just don't buy singles any more. As a format the single is on its last legs, with more people choosing to buy tunes on the Internet or save their cash for an album. The Band Aid 20 single is still shifting lots of units, but the final figure may not go very far to help the people of Darfur.
While the stars were recording their bits for Band Aid, desperate retailers on Grafton Street began pumping the Christmas compilations through their PA systems in the hope of enticing customers to buy. They also turned the volume up even louder, as if the echoey voice of Shakin' Stevens booming around the premises would spur shoppers on to more frantic spending. The stores must be wired up to each other, because they all use the same Christmas compilation, the one featuring Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, Chris Rea, Wizzard, Slade, The Pogues, John Lennon and David Essex. You'd think Christmas began in 1973.
Last year The Darkness tried to revive the traditional glam-rock Christmas tune with a song that managed to slip the words "bell end" and "ringpiece" into its chorus. Alas, it was beaten by the dark, morose Mad World, by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules, from the soundtrack of Donnie Darko. There was nothing in it about Christmas, although there was a reference to a birthday (not Jesus's). But it struck a minor chord with people who hated the forced jollity of the season and is one of many Christmas number ones that weren't about Christmas but have come to evoke the season just as surely as O Come All Ye Faithful. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, McCartney's Mull Of Kintyre and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Power Of Love will always remind old rockers of Christmases past, while Can We Fix It? will remind children of that Bob the Builder toy they got in 2000.
If there is a quintessentially Irish Christmas song it's The Pogues' Fairytale Of New York, which we seem to have adopted as our seasonal anthem. It's been covered by everyone from Christy Moore to Keating (he toned down the "you scumbag, you maggot" bits, so as not to offend grandmothers). This year we have another Irish Christmas anthem, Everybody Knows It's Christmas, by The Camembert Quartet. It's not half as good as Shane MacGowan's classic, but it will give you a a laugh while you get jostled by stressed-out shoppers and drunken middle managers.
Christmas songs are usually the preserve of cheesy pop and easy-listening acts, but every now and then a "serious" rock band gets in on the act, releasing one in the comfortable knowledge that their fans will see the irony. The stern warning implicit in Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is given added weight by Bruce Springsteen's bearlike voice. I swear, Boss, we won't pout.
Dig into the back catalogue of your favourite indie band, from Sonic Youth to The Flaming Lips, and there's sure to be a Christmas song in there somewhere. Even The Thrills, a band normally associated with summer in California, have a version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Tsk, the things people get up to in Blackrock.
But few bands go as far as the Fab Four at Christmas. Every year from 1963 to 1969 The Beatles recorded a Christmas song that was sent exclusively to members of their fan club. It was a chance for John, Paul, George and Ringo to let their mop tops down and let loose with some seasonal silliness. Like The Goon Show on acid, the records featured mad interpretations of Good King Wenceslas and Auld Lang Syne, an original tune called Christmas Time Is Here Again and various spoken-word skits, nonsense rhymes and impersonations. They don't make 'em like that any more.
10 twisted Christmas songs
1 Christmas Is Going To The Dogs by Eels
2 Christmas Is Really Fantastic by Frank Sidebottom
3 White Christmas by Aidan Walsh, Master of the Universe
4 Christmas At Ground Zero by Weird Al
5 Christmas With The Devil by Spinal Tap
6 Santa Doesn't Cop Out On Dope by Sonic Youth
7 The Little Drum Machine Boy by Beck
8 I Farted On Santa's Lap (Now Christmas Is Gonna Stink For Me) by The Little Stinkers
9 Christmas Countdown by Frank Kelly
10 Chipmunks Roasting On An Open Fire by Bob Rivers
