Christmas Records

Joe writes: Obviously the best Christmas record ever is Fairytale of New York and the best Christmas album ever is the Phil Spector one.

Here are three less obvious choices

3) Christmas Song - Dave Matthews Band. From the Platinum Christmas album which also contains two other really good Christmas originals by Dido and R Kelly. Maybe I'll post those next year.



2) O Tannenbaum - The Vince Guaraldi Trio. An essential purchase at this time of year is the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. This is the opening track - a jazz piano trio version of the tune also known as The Red Flag isn't obviously Christmas-y, but the whole album really is.


1) A Kind Of Christmas Card - Morten Harket. Great uplifting track from former A-Ha frontman that should have been a massive hit. Shades of All The Young Dudes.


(update of post originally from 3/12/2007)

Dion + Spector = A true classic

Phil writes: Yet another singer I was reintroduced to by my son. He played me this enjoyable and very unusual track a few years ago. From there I discovered the classic album it comes from, 'Born To Be With You' and then a number of lesser but still very good albums Dion has made over the years. I like his voice a lot, and there are standout tracks on all the albums. Apparently he didn't really approve of what Spector did with him, but many critics have disagreed with him about this, and it may be that one reason why he hasn't really been consistently successful is a lack of judgement about his material and the sounds producers achieve for him.

Dion - Make The Woman Love Me (not on iTunes so Amazon link for album)