13 December 2007

Christmas in Africa! and Other Songs

As I am lucky enough to work in a place that plays the Alvin & The Chipmunks Christmas Song at least once EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I think it's pretty understandable that I have come to loathe every song in the limited repertoire of popular holiday music. I especially hate "The Twelve Days of Christmas" because though we would never think of playing, say, "The Wheels on the Bus" or "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" or any other endlessly repetitive song in the workplace -- because it would KILL US -- we get to hear gleeful choruses belting out "FIVE GOOOOLDEN RINGS!!" several thousand times a day, and must still find a way to retain some facade of holiday cheer.

Knowing this, you will not take lightly my reccomendation of this video:




If somebody wanted to give me a really terrific, thoughtful, cheap present this year, they'd do similar arrangements of other 80s favorites, replacing key words with holiday vocabulary. "The Safety Dance," lends itself nicely to a song about reindeer: "We can fly if we want to / We can leave Santa behind..." Or how about Madonna: "Like a snowman / built for the very first time..."


I'm still working on my holiday version of "Thriller."



Seriously, anything's better than Alvin.

1 comment:

Jennie said...

Once upon a time, I worked at a bookstore. A local downtown independent type bookstore. That owned, like, 5 Christmas CDs and would play them over and over and over and over from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

You learn to tune it out.

Until one day, a customer comes up to you, her eyes manically rage-filled, and points out "Must be Santa," with all 25 verses as sung by Raffi and a children's chorus had been playing on repeat for the past hour.