60 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!
Original release date: 26th October 1998
Buy-stream Merry Christmas Have A Nice Life here (Amazon)
The clues for a very Cyndi Lauper Christmas experience were definitely there if you were paying attention. Her early music often had a playfulness to it that, while not festive, certainly felt like she could embrace the holiday season. Then, on her 1993 Hat Full Of Stars opus she introduced us to Feels Like Christmas while 1996's Sisters of Avalon featured Early Christmas Morning on the Japanese edition of that release. Both turn up again on Cyndi's Merry Christmas... Have A Nice Life which saw Cyndi introduce us to her take on a seasonal songbook. It has a little bit of everything you need and expect from the most wonderful time of the year - melancholy, togetherness and optimism that we might all carry a little of the Christmas spirit into a kinder tomorrow...
The album opens with Home On Christmas Day, a song that recognises the twang of sorry that feels so much more pronounced during the holidays. The modern-rock sounding gem gives some hope that reunions will happen on the most important day, even if just in spirit. The greatest musical Christmas promise since I'll Be Home For Christmas. Early Christmas Morning (slightly different to the aforementioned version) suggests that Cyndi made it in time, as this choir of children sing her festive song that makes it feel like it belongs in some magical musical yet to be written. You'll be Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree to that giddy romp as well as Cyndi's own take on the Yuletide evergreen - both are great for getting the party going; the manic synths like elves have taken over the keyboards.
Christmas Conga brings the mariachi so you can sing along, dance like no-one's watching and get into the feliz navidad feeling. There's something brilliantly bonkers about singing about "bonga bonga bonga, do the Christmas conga", a chant so infectious you'll be singing it until New Year. Next up is an exquisite storytelling - Minnie and Santa is the tale of what happens when your crush is jolly Old Saint Nick, full of brilliant rhyming couplets, cooing harmonies and a chorus that is so bawdy it belongs in a British pub, sung loudly with tankards clinking together. Shines as brightly as the star on top of your tree. It definitely Feels Like Christmas when Cyndi sings how terrible life can be sometimes but how we can make it better if we just recognise the magic in the people around us. Joyful and triumphant!
No comments:
Post a Comment