Tag Archives: george michael

Holiday Horrors 2009

Holiday Horrors: “Last Christmas”

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George Michael has much to answer for. When I was a kid, I recall his Faith album being a hot item amongst the sixth grade set for its SHOCKING videos, and providing much preteen giggle fodder with songs like “I Want Your Sex”. Who let him write a song with that title? Has anyone whose first language is English ever said that out loud? Was the alternate title “I Am Liking to Make Fuck Party”?

Last_Christmas.jpgBut one of his biggest crimes is the execrable “Last Christmas”, a horrible little tune that, much like “Wonderful Christmastime”, has received an unwelcome revival in the last few years. I blame those 24-hour holiday radio stations that pop up right after Thanksgiving. Even they can’t play “Jingle Bell Rock” every hour, so they had to dig up semi-forgotten Yuletide songs to fill up the spaces between “Blue Christmas” and Ronnie Spector’s “Winter Wonderland”.

Maybe it’s just me. I associate Christmas with being with my family. I don’t associate it looking for luv. But in the world of George Michael, Christmas is the day he gives his heart away. Unfortunately, the object of his affection regifted it the day after.

Here’s my question, George: What exactly did you expect from someone you met on Christmas? That’s not exactly the best day to forge a lasting, loving relationship. “I can’t believe someone I met while hanging out at a bar by myself on the biggest family holiday of the year turned out to be a skeeze!”

The original recording of “Last Christmas” is extremely fey and bloodless and full of wimpy synths. But Wham! sounds like the MC5 compared to its cover versions. Just peep the song’s Wikipedia page to see some of the winners who’ve taken on this tune. I defy you to defend any more than three people listed there.

Two stand out: 1) Crazy Frog, because apparently the demon-spawn who created him owned the rights to every song on the planet. 2) Carrie Underwood, because she performed it at the White House. “Merry Christmas, Mr. President! Here’s an uplifting song about getting railed during the holidays!”

Videocracy

George Michael: The Universal Language

I find foreign languages funny. And I find them especially funny in song form. I have no idea why, I just do. I don’t question it. I might as well ask, “Why is the sky blue?” or “What is this lump and how long has it been there?”

One format that always kills me is traditional salsa. Again, I can’t truly express why. But traditional salsa groups (and even some non-traditional ones) do something that always makes me laugh: the horn section singing the chorus in unison.

Why does this crack me up? Again, no idea. Something about the timbre of the vocals, how they sound vaguely distant, like the singers are shouting through paper towel tubes. And how, no matter what group is playing, the Horn Player Chorus sounds exactly the same.

I find this so funny, in fact, that I often think of songs that could be done in a salsa style, just to imagine a fictional horn section singing the chorus. For instance, I can make myself laugh by just imagining the semi-obscure early 80s synth-pop hit “Poison Arrow” as a salsa song. Because in my head, I hear a horn players singing “shoot that poison arrow!”, intercut with the keyboard lick recreated by a five-piece brass section.

In that spirit, and knowing full well no one else may find this amusing, I present this clip of a band called La Palabra doing their rendition of “Careless Whisper” (retitled “Rumores” for no discernible reason). The Wife tells me this was a pretty big hit on Spanish radio back in the day, not too long after the Wham! original climbed the charts.

If forget how/why she discovered this, but I am oh so glad she did. Enjoy!