Thursday, 11 December 2025

The Darkness - Mistletoe and Wine


2 WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!

Buy-stream Mistletoe and Wine here (external link)

I have to confess that nearly 25 years after creating one of the most exhilarating Christmas sing-alongs of all time (Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)), I didn't exactly have a cover of the Cliff Richard standard by The Darkness on my festive song bingo card. And I definitely didn't expect it to be such a faithful reimagining (with some definite Darkness twist in the production). But here's why it totally works - Christmas music is the most flexible of genres. More than any other medium, it bends generously to the will of the people making artistic decisions about how to represent their feelings towards the season. And, let's not forget that Mistletoe and Wine started as a bawdy sing-along (a la Oom Pah Pah in Oliver Twist) in the musical Scraps, so it was already open to interpretation. By bucking expectations, The Darkness embrace the hopefulness of the lyrics and magic of the season, yet still give it a little edge - it is certainly more introspective and reflective with some shoegaze vibes and crunchy-as-boots-on-frozen-snow guitars. Perhaps Humbuckers through a Marshall is truly the sound of Christmas (as one YouTube commenter noted)... Hello Darkness, my old friend. Christmas isn't the same without you...

**Ghosts of Christmas past**
at

No comments:

Post a Comment