Zomgee

It’s been Christmastime for quite a while now and so naturally I think we have all heard our fair share of Christmas music for the year. Now I like Christmas music. I like the Christian spiritual type, I like the upbeat secular type, I like the Santa type, I like old songs and I like new songs. All in all Christmas music can be great, but what I can’t understand is why musicians have to but their heads in and ruin the music. You’re probably wondering how that makes any manner of sense at all, well let me explain myself.

There are certain songs that are, how shall we say, iconic. These songs have been heard and sung by everyone under the sun. We know them, and we love them. These are songs like “White Christmas,” “Silent Night,” and “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.” As it turns out there is something about musicians that dictates that at least once in their career must needs do a Christmas CD and as it turns out most of these musicians are not creative enough to write their own songs, so they sing the old favorites. Now there would be absolutely nothing wrong with this, because who doesn’t want to hear their favorite artist sing their favorite Christmas songs, but why is it that these musicians, who may write good music normally, have to absolutely butcher these songs.

Where is it written that they have to somehow “make the song theirs?” Now I understand they’re just trying to make it fit with their style of music but if its a song that doesn’t fit into your style of music – WRITE YOUR OWN. I’m tired of hearing crappy renditions of wonderful songs just because some moron musician thought it would be a great idea to put a little flair into it. Yes I’m looking at you Elvis. He’s certainly not the only one, in fact far from it, but he is a good example because his entire Christmas CD is absolutely terrible all because he made great songs sound horrible by putting them in his “style.”

Please, please if you ever decide to become a musician and ever decide to do a Christmas CD let me just give you a little hint: If Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole has already sung the song, then either don’t bother or for goodness sake do the song justice and no adding in your own flavor of melisma does not count as doing the song justice in fact it counts as reason to stop singing altogether because contrary to popular belief it (a) does not sound good and (b) does not mean you’re a good singer because you can do it. I think ultimately we’d just plain be better off if singers would just get the rights and put the Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole versions of their songs straight on their CD instead of making our ears bleed with their own atrocities. Please just go home, learn how to sing, or create something creative – plenty of musicians can actually do that after all.