"Merry Xmas Everybody
" is a single by the English glam rock band Slade. Written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea, and produced by Chas Chandler, it was the band's sixth and final number one single in the UK. It held the coveted UK Christmas Number One slot in December 1973, beating Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" into fourth place, and was still number one in mid-January; it stayed in the Top 40 well into February. It is affectionately held in similar regard by UK residents as Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" is by Americans. [1] The song is particularly memorable for frontman Noddy Holder's typically screeching delivery of the line “It's Chriiiiiiist-maaaaaaaaaaas" towards the song's close.
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MERRY XMAS EVERYBODY TICKETS
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History and origin
The song was first written in 1967 with different lyrics. Its original title was "Buy Me a Rocking Chair". In a 2003 article by
Chris Hunt of
Q magazine, Noddy Holder described the genesis of the song: “It was one of the first bits of melody I ever wrote, dating back to 1967. We’d written it in the psychedelic days – the original lyrics were ‘Buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by/won’t you buy me a looking glass to look you in the eye’. Six years later we used the melody and changed the lyric.”
[2] The lyric was completed by Holder in a writing session through the night at his mother's house.
Holder described his reasons for writing the song in the November 2006 issue of
MOJO Magazine:
"I wanted it to be a Working class
—working-class United Kingdom, British Christmas song. And it fitted right with the political and social things going on at the time. It was very grim: there was the Three-Day Week, power cuts at 10 o'clock at night, television finished early because there was no electricity, there was a miners' strike... the whole country was in turmoil. That's why I came up with the line 'Look to the future now It's only just begun.'
That's what everybody had to do. The country couldn't have been at a lower ebb. In times like that, people always turn to showbiz."
Despite the song's association with British working class, it was actually recorded in
New York in mid 1973.
[3] The band initially had trouble capturing the right feel for the song. In an adjoining studio,
John Lennon was working on his album
Mind Games
. The ex-
Beatle had recorded his own
Christmas single in 1971, and had contributed to seven
Beatles Christmas records.
Slade manager/producer
Chas Chandler: "We just couldn't get the sound right. Then
John Lennon turned up with a
harmonium he was about to use in the studio next door. It was just the sound we wanted."
[4]
Popularity
The song is still a regular feature at UK nightclubs around the Christmas season, especially on Christmas Eve where midnight is signalled by Noddy's screeching finale. The song has re-entered the UK Top 40 singles chart a further five times - 1981, 1983, 2006, 2007 and 2008 - it eventually sold one million copies.
[5] There was also a dance remix made by Swedish dance duo Flush that was a UK top 30 entry in 1998.
However, the ubiquitity of the song is also the largest source of criticism for the single. In December 2008, the
Holiday Inn hotel in
Kensington removed Merry Xmas Everybody from the lobby's playlists following "overwhelming" customer feedback that the song was "too irritating".
[6]
As of December 15 2008, the song is at No. 32 in the UK charts.
Availability
As well as the single release, it has since been featured on the albums
Crackers: The Slade Party Album
(live version),
Wall Of Hits
,
Feel The Noize: Greatest Hits
and
The Very Best Of Slade
, and is also available in
The Slade Box
anthology box set.
The song has also been released on many Christmas compilation albums. It was re-released on 4 December 2006 in two editions, red and green. The red one features "
Cum on Feel the Noize" as a B side; the green features two songs from
Crackers: The Slade Party Album
: Here's To The New Year and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.
Whilst unofficial, a music video for the song that is used on most Christmas playlists on music channels sees the band performing on an unnamed TV show. Don Powell the drummer gradually plays the drums crazily, not playing it to the identical beats in the song. This becomes highly noticeable towards the end of the song, were inappropriate cymbal hits are heard, and beats which are too strong.
Cover versions
The song has been covered by various artists, including British pop group
Steps and Dutch group
Hermes House Band.
- The Spice Girls performed it live at all 4 concerts in December 1999 during their mini-tour Christmas In Spiceworld as part of Karaoke Christmas Medley.
- Noel Gallagher (of Oasis) performed an acoustic cover called Merry Christmas Everyone
for The Royle Family's Christmas Special, and the song was later released.
- British girl group Girls Aloud have performed a live cover and included a studio version on a limited edition bonus disc for their album Chemistry
, along with other Christmas songs.
- British artist Tony Christie released a cover in 2005.
- R.E.M. released a version as their fan club Christmas single in 2007.
- In 1998, Swedish dance duo Flush released a dance remix of the song that was a UK top 30 entry.
- Noddy Holder's screeching delivery of the line “It's Chriiiiiiist-maaaaaaaaaaas" was sampled in the Crazy Frog's 2005 Christmas single "Jingle Bells/U Can't Touch This".
- German band Die Toten Hosen did a cover of the song for their Christmas album Wir warten auf's Christkind
.
- The 2002 "Blue Peter" Christmas special featured a Bollywood inspired version.
- The British goth rock band The Mission (in the US known as The Mission (UK)) playing under the name Metal Gurus (as a glam cover band) did a cover of this in 1990. It was released in a single with the B side, T-Rex's Metal Guru. There was a music video done, produced by Holder & Lea, who are also seen in the video.
- The Cure has used the song at sounchecks, and bootlegs exist of them singing it.