An Alternative Christmas Playlist Review

Timberwolf

• 15 min read
An Alternative Christmas Playlist Review

Last... year, I swore off the idea of doing another mainstream Christmas playlist and definitely the idea of doing another one with 100 songs on it as my ears slowly turned to goo and I listened to far more Michael Bublé than any man rightfully should in a single day.

So instead, we're going to attempt to isolate ourselves from the dangers of sonic attack from Cliff or McCartney menacing us from the far side of a CS-80 by reviewing one of those alternative/punk/indie type Christmas playlists. (Gosh I hope that works, #foreshadowing). My detailed selection methodology being typing the words "alternative" and "christmas" into a popular music streaming platform and picking the first thing that was from 2024 and also not a three-digit number of songs because even on an "alternative" playlist they'd probably still find a way to fill it with turgid 1950s crap.

So here we go. 65 alternative Christmas songs, courtesy of Universal Music Group.

#1: Weezer - We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Whatever happened to Weezer, eh? Seems no matter what Rivers & Co. do they're always going to exist in the shadow of that one CD of theirs everyone owned, Windows 95. I'm not even sure when this is from, but it's a short and sweet slice of playing a traditional carol in the traditional style from when they were still on Bill Gates' record label, rather than trying to be post-ironically unironically ironic or whatever the hell was going on with that Van Halen covers album.

#2: The Libertines - Shiver

Let us begin Christmas in the traditional way, by checking Wikipedia biographies for the headings "controversy", "arrest" and "later convictions". This is actually new, which is odd because it feels so much like vintage landfill indie I can already faintly hear someone circa-2007 in a too-tight shirt telling me, "it's proper banging, that".

#3: Charles William - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Speaking of the late 2000s, you kinda forget the massive influence Fleet Foxes had when they just wandered out and went "yeah we're doing folk music now" and I know that ultimately ended up with Mumford & Sons being a thing which existed but, er... before I get entirely sidetracked, this is sort of in that vein and more of the former than the latter.

#4: Barns Courtney & Lennon Stella - Baby, It's Cold Outside

I will give them points for actually singing as a team and not CONSTANTLY INTERRUPTING EACH OTHER. It feels less skeezy and more "partner endlessly distracted by what's happening outside"

The reference answer in the back pages for Exercise 3.2 in the Pop Punk Christmas Record Covers: Theory And Execution textbook.

#6: Bastille - Merry Xmas Everybody

OK, as an idea I'm really on board with this one. You take Slade, who were at their core a hard rock band with a tremendous sense of fun and then you do a soft acoustic cover of their well-known Christmas #1. Not a shit breathy one designed for department store adverts, a proper one. I like the subversion.

#7: The Killers & Ryan Pardey - Don't Shoot Me Santa

Just like Weezer will never escape the shadow of their somewhat crash-prone operating system, The Killers will always be "that Mr Brightside band". And they're not helping themselves here, because this is absolutely "Mr Brightside: Christmas Edition", at least in the bits where it revs up.

#8: Spinal Tap - Christmas With The Devil

I fear that even with a relatively svelte 65 tracks we're already running into the problem with these huge Christmas collections, which is it's hard to keep them thematically consistent. It's not a bad record, it's just bizarre in here next to the landfill indie.

#9: New Found Glory - Ex-Miss

Exercise 4.1 from Pop Punk Christmas Record Covers: Theory And Execution, but they have gone for the extra credit points, including the one for "use of sleigh bells".

#10: I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME - Christmas Drag

They probably just followed the ever-growing trail of grammar pedants, Dallon. I think this is alright, for something I've never heard before and I hope I'm safe in saying that given the lack of any obvious "Disappearance", "Time in Cuba" or "Court Case" headings on the lead singer's Wikipedia article. I enjoy the use of "Carol Of The Bells", which does lead to some awkward playlist sequencing given...

#11: The Big Moon - Carol Of The Bells

I suppose you have to have it somewhere, and I suppose whoever put it here felt very clever, in much the same way as the wedding DJ I once watched play both "Good Times" and "Rapper's Delight" in sequence to a resolutely empty dance floor before the groom went and had a word. In other words, it might be clever, but I'm not having a good time here.

#12: Sunflower Thieves - It's Not Like The Christmas Films

Oh dear, the unnecessarily breathy record approaches. It does gain a bit of welcome life after that unfortunate start, and they do say "fuck" so that's probably got them struck off the John Lewis advertising department's Christmas card list.

#13: Cheap Trick - I Wish It Was Christmas Today

I like this, but I do want to posit - if you were DJing the notional indie disco, and you have all the po-faced and very serious people there doing that sort of indie appreciating thing (never dancing, that is for the lesser people), and you suddenly whack a Cheap Trick 45 on the decks, do you think this is going to go down well?

(A rhetorical question posed by a man who once played "Silver Machine" at a "NO HAWKWIND" night.)

#14: Rhys Lewis - Christmas Eve

There's something ever so slightly Amy Winehouse about this one. Sort of like "Valerie", but if "Valerie" had lyrics about listening to Shakin' Stevens and drinking too much.

(note to self: listen to "Valerie" to check it doesn't have lyrics about this before hitting publish)

#15: Rogue Wave - Jingle Bell Rock

I think this is the first time I've heard this on a Christmas songs playlist and it's not sounded like it should be coming from some sort of animatronic ornament. At least, as long as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros never made their own animatronic ornaments.

#16: Set It Off - This Christmas (I'll Burn It To The Ground)

There's a bit of a zig-zag of musical styles going on here. Sequencing people, sequencing! When I used to DJ events shared between the '60s/'70s alternative music society, the indie society, and the ROCK society we used to have this thing where we'd make the last record of our set an absolute bastard for the next person to follow, and you'd go up to the booth with your punk set in mind only to find the indie DJ putting on the softest Belle & Sebastian they could find, resulting in a quick mental calculation of, "maybe Apeman, then it'd be a Kinks double-header, and by that point we can roll early Kinks into Ramones and"... anyway, yeah, sequencing.

#17: Rise Against - Making Christmas

A stalwart of "Punk goes Christmas" albums. It's quite urgent.

#18: Fall Out Boy - Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

Despite the shorter playlist, I fear this year's review may take even longer than usual as I'm quite enjoying this. I know, we're only 18 tracks in and these things have a tendency to fall off fast somewhere around number 40, but I have hope!

#19: Handsome Ghost - Christmas In Jersey

Well, other than the sequencing. I even had a brief moment of "do I have random play switched on?" A bit slow to get going this one, but I do enjoy that guitar which comes in about two minutes in.

#20: Counting Crows - A Long December

I'm going to declare An Interest here, and it's that this is one of my favourite seasonal records. Yes, I'm not sure "Christmas" is a word I'd use to describe anything here, but it has "December" right there in the title and the Crows absolutely nail that sort of wistful end-of-year feeling in the bit of the month before all the chaos and the endless parties start.

#21: Jimmy Eat World - Last Christmas

My partner Whamageddoned me in bloody November with some exceptionally leaky headphones and I'm still angry that this is the concept when Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" is the ur-Christmas single, the reference by which all Christmas playlists in shops must be judged. A standard by which I find them lacking, given the rarity of hearing Slade's opus in the wild these days.

As to this, it's okay I guess. My jimmies are not rustled by it.

#22: Grinspoon - Blood On The Snow

Yet again I am thrown by UMG putting new records on their 2024 albumish/playlistish thing, because this is very much a late '90s band and this sounds very much like the utter weirdness of late '90s indie before everything turned Brightside. I'm tempted to see what else is on that Grinspoon album and here is where I realise that damn it UMG, you got me.

#23: Billy Lockett - Guiding Star (Christmas Eve)

Watch out! The mainstream lists are leaking! That is, assuming even having a non-Bublé record on your playlist isn't immediately "alternative" by today's standards. Perhaps I judge harshly, but in sonic terms this is more like the never-heard-of-'ems from a 100-song regular playlist than something which fits with Counting Crows and blink-182. It's not bad, it just doesn't quite feel like it's in the right place.

#24: Norah Jones - Wintertime

And same problem - I have no real issue with the record, just the placement here. Although it is oddly reminiscent of Link Wray's "Fallin' Rain".

A classic of the genre, and I'm wondering if "Grandpa's Last Christmas" is going to be hidden somewhere further down in a point I haven't scrolled to.

Also it's over in less than the time I took to type that.

#26: Lauren Spencer Smith - Single On The 25th

You remember how last year I had this whole thing about records which sounded like the soundtrack from a low-budget Christmas film? This feels like the high-budget version.

#27: Oh Wonder - This Christmas

All we need is a record called "Next Christmas" and we've got the trilogy.

#28: James TW - Last Christmas

Oh dear. So one of the problems I had with the big playlists was repeats of covers we already had, and this is the same situation; sure it might be okay in isolation, but the Jimmy Eat World version was better, why do we need the same song again but less good?

#29: Anson Seabra - Christmas Got Colder

It's not quite as bad as Turgid '50s Nonsense Time, but I feel like this section of the compilation is sagging a bit. I was hoping for a bit more nervous punk energy in my alternative Christmas.

#30: Celeste - A Little Love

This is tagged as "from the John Lewis & Waitrose Christmas Advert 2020" and I think that is the point at which you need to give up on your claim of "alternative" because John Lewis are not exactly scouting their Christmas merchandise-hawking soundtrack at a crust punk gig. Irritatingly twee, which is about what you'd expect from those primetime TV advertising credentials.

#31: Fountains of Wayne - I Want An Alien For Christmas

And back on track. Another alternative Christmas playlist stalwart.

#32: The Smithereens - Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer

You've got to be pretty damn careful when you start messing with anything that appeared on "A Christmas Gift For You" and my judgment here is "not quite careful enough". There's some good bits, but I also believe a curate once had a famous egg with much the same condition.

#33: Sam Fender - The Dying Light (Winter Edit)

I am struggling with what to make of this, and there's something about it which gives me the Coldplay problem; it feels like it's designed to sound sad in a stadium full of 80,000 people. These are not reconcilable concepts.

#34: The Killers & Toni Halliday - A Great Big Sled

Mr Brightside's Winter Transport Arrangements.

#35: Owl City - Peppermint Winter

Lin-Manuel Miranda ruined this style for anything which isn't a Disney musical. Which isn't to put down Miranda's work, but quite the opposite: it's so perfect for that purpose you can't listen to anything even vaguely like that without wondering where the animated characters are.

(And yes, I know this came first, but mere chronological advantage doesn't save you from the all-encompassing phenomenon that is the Encanto soundtrack)

#36: Bahamas - Christmas Must Be Tonight

A pleasant rootsy, folky sort of record.

#37: The Offspring - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

And the wild lurching of questionable sequencing continues. Carefulness of messing with: acceptable. Stays close to the Darlene Love version throughout, although by the same token doesn't really add anything to it. I maintain that the Raveonettes are the only people who ever truly got what made that record work.

#38: The Maine - Ho Ho Hopefully

An admission: I'm starting to find this difficult, because usually when I write these things I'm relying on being quite angry by this point and having done the "review a Cliff Richard record by using Hawkwind's Sonic Attack" joke at least once. Look. It is fine. That makes for a good Christmas playlist and a bad acerbic review of a Christmas playlist.

#39: Yellowcard - Christmas Lights

This is also fine. Not in the "dog sat on a chair in the middle of a raging fire" sense, just regular old "I could put this on in the background for a December house party and not an eyelid would be batted" fine.

I mean, it's my house and people know me, I can play the Walker Brothers followed by a selection of countrypolitan greats and no-one bats an eyelid either.

#40: The Shins - Wonderful Christmastime

And here you were thinking you were safe from McCartney.

Of all the treatments that dirge could be given, "in the style of the Monkees" is one of the most unexpected and yet also somehow the most successful. It doesn't entirely rescue it because I'm not sure you can ever rescue a record with all the lyrical complexity of "If You Buy This Record Your Life Will Be Better" and none of the tempo, but the Shins have achieved the heady heights of Vaguely Bearable.

#41: the bird and the bee - Carol Of The Bells

Less good cover of cover we already had 2: Breathy Acoustic Boogaloo.

#42: Joss Stone - What Christmas Means To Me

"What Christmas Means To Me" has been the saviour of many a sagging mid-section of a 100-song Christmas playlist and although not quite as necessary, this keeps all of the welcome groove and bounce.

#43: Sarah Connor - Not So Silent Night

Breathy cover intro subversion! I also enjoy that she namechecks the Unblinking Eye Of Bublé. Obviously had to suffer the same Christmas playlists I have.

#44: Real Friends - I Had A Heart

The band name, title and inevitably "could we be any more emo?" band biography does not disappoint.

#45: Weezer - O Holy Night

Not as bad as I was dreading when I found out both that there was an entire album... well, EP of these Weezer Christmas things, and also that it was from 2008. Although perhaps another exhibit in my theory that a band either dies young, or lives long enough to end up trying to Be Queen.

I wish Microsoft would get the same urge to recapture those high-spirited days when you could play the "Buddy Holly" video on your computer, then maybe we'd have software with an actual menu that says "Settings" rather than having to search for an abstract representation of cog buried in whatever the virtual equivalent of a filing cabinet in a flooded basement is.

#46: The Maine - Santa Stole My Girlfriend

This does not arouse in me strong enough emotions to stop me thinking about a world in which we have obvious draggable title bars and the place you go to make a program do things is consistent between programs or even, for that matter, different parts of the same program.

#47: Jack Johnson - Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer

We're bucking the multiple covers trend with the second one in the playlist being the somewhat better version.

#48: Blossoms - Christmas Eve (Soul Purpose)

This feels like it should have been much bigger than it was. Contains pretty much every element that makes for a good Christmas single, down to the sleigh bells.

#49: Norah Jones & Seth MacFarlane - Little Jack Frost Get Lost

Ah, we've found a way to sneak turgid '50s-style nonsense onto the list, even if we can't get away with the real thing. It doesn't help that the instrumentation is pretty much just the Family Guy theme cut up and reassembled.

#50: Andrew Bird - Christmas In April

Again, I enjoy this rootsy sort of stuff but it feels like it belongs on its own album. You could do a couple of LP sides of this, 46 minutes in and out, and it would be a pleasant thing to put on underneath some relaxed drinks without worrying you're going to get the Manhattans on the table and suddenly the playlist goes careening off into a high-energy punk record.

#51: The Lathums - Krampus

Which it doesn't, but this is still jarring enough a change that you'd be at risk of some drink spillage. Maybe about 4-5ml, you know, not a disaster but still a waste of good rye. These multi-track monsters are just too much, people. Also they take an absolute bloody age to review, especially when you can't skip half the tracks within 30 seconds and type some hopefully amusing variation on "this is awful".

#52: The Academic - Lonely This Christmas

Eagerly listening to the intro hoping, "are you gonna do the Elvis-via-Les Gray impersonation?" Not really, sadly. Other than that, a decent cover.

#53: Anberlin - Christmas, Baby Please Come Home

I was a bit worried by the first few seconds, but we have a serviceable version which doesn't try to mess too much with the source material while also not being so faithful you just end up with a less good variant of the same record. I mean, it's no Raveonettes version but if you needed something a bit higher energy and the original wasn't thematically appropriate I could see this sneaking into a playlist.

#54: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - X'Mas Time (It Sure Doesn't Feel Like It)

I've put enough variations of this on Christmas playlists over the years that I welcome its inclusion here.

#55: Blossoms - Wonderful Christmastime

Less good cover version of cover already and so on etc. etc.

The biggest problem here is that it's faithful to the original. I typed the "alternative" word because I didn't want to be McCartneyed, UMG! Why must he haunt me here, with his single lyric and his songs that somehow seem to last at least 15 hours apiece?

#56: Luscious Jackson - Let It Snow

Into the final ten and I must say, this compilation hasn't made any serious missteps yet. There's been the odd sag but I have generally enjoyed most things, even some that I didn't expect to.

This somewhat disrespectful treatment with its oh-so-groovy organ is exactly what the usually staid "Let It Snow" needs.

#57: Heartless Bastards - Blue Christmas

I reiterate my point that there's an LP of purely this stuff where it would shine so much better than it does shuffled in amongst everything else.

#58: Seabird - Joy To The World

I feel bad judging this harshly, given last year I'd probably be listening to track 18 of a 20-track unbroken run of horrible faux-'50s records in which people sound like sex pests for at least a third of them, but it's a bit "nothing", isn't it?

#59: LYRA - The Magic Of Christmas

We're hewing dangerously close to those department store adverts again.

#60: PUBLIC - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

I fear we've entered that clock-watching, "eh, nobody will ever get this far and they'll be too drunk to care if they do" phase of the long playlist. Look. Don't do 65, 75 or however many songs and let it all get a bit half-arsed at the end. Do 40 you'll be proud of. There's no shame to doing something that'd fit on a 2-CD compilation and leaving your audience hungry for more.

Also there is no point I get too drunk to care about music, as anybody who's suffered one of my slurred rambles about 1970s mastering techniques will attest to.

#61: Tori Amos - Christmastide

A confession: I never really "got" Tori Amos. I understand it is good, I just have the feeling there's a level of highbrow musical appreciation somewhere over there and there's a world of scuzz, low art and deep enjoyment of Chinnichap lyrics over here in which I sit.

But do feel free to enjoy, those of you capable of appreciating finer things.

#62: Hootie & The Blowfish with Abigail Hodges - Won't Be Home For Christmas

We're bringing this compilation in to land, and we're doing it with soft verses and big euphoric choruses.

#63: Bendik Braenne & Emilie Nicolas - White Highway

Which may be fine, but I'm starting to feel like there's a staff member flicking the lights on and off and a DJ glaring at the people in the corner wondering when they're going to get the hint.

#64: Emelie Hollow - Feeling Of Christmas

Someone has started pointedly sweeping the dance floor with an unnecessarily big broom. It's not officially closing time yet, but you get the distinct feeling you are not supposed to still be here.

#65: Bear's Den - The Star of Bethnal Green

Finally, the notional entertainment venue of this compilation restrains their late night barperson before they can yell, "don't you have homes to go to?" to get in one final good number.

I like this, but I feel that the impact is lessened by already being 10 minutes in to these slower records by this point, and most of them distinctly floor-clearing in nature, so you're doing your big finish at the point most people have already got in a minicab and are listening not to your set but to Smooth Radio at very low volume.

"It's just up here on the left mate, anywhere's fine"

That was actually... not horrible. Yes, I missed my classics, my Slade and my Wizzard and hoping they've also stuck the Darkness on there somewhere. Yes we did fail at the idea that the whole mission brief was not to have to listen to "Wonderful Christmastime", let alone twice, but we were spared what in olden times would amount to an entire disc of plodding faux '50s-style glurge so I'll take my victories even if they must be qualified.

The problem with these things is they're just too long. The lack of thematic consistency, the repeats of the same song in multiple covers, the saggy filler moments - I think another crime which can be added to the trial of streaming media is the idea of compilation albums which can be infinitely long. I know I bring up "A Christmas Gift To You" constantly during these things but one of the reasons it works is that it's just one LP, and one with a typically short early '60s runtime at that - it can stick in one musical style without being wearisome, and there's no necessity to pad it out with filler because there's barely enough room for what's already on it.

I think next year we might do one of those "artists of a single record label" compilations. And check it carefully for any signs of "Wonderful Christmastime" first.