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At this wondrous time of the year, many of us worldwide become nostalgic about our youth when we looked forward to everything Santa would deliver underneath our respective Christmas trees. If you were like me, I'd leave cookies out on my living room table next to the wood stove and getting up every couple of hours to see if I could sneak a peek at old Saint Nick, but to no avail I would never catch a glimpse of the jolly one.
Alas, it wasn't until years later that I was told there wasn't a Santa Claus. I already had a clue that there wasn't one due to the fact Santa's handwriting resembled my mother's and father's cursive styles. Nonetheless, the joy of Christmas during my youth was inescapable. There were three main reasons why Christmas was my favorite time of the year. First, the anticipation of presents I was going to receive. Second, the amount of time my family would spend together eating good food and laughing at one another. Last, but not least, the classic music that we would listen to days leading up to Christmas and a couple of days after.
There is something special when you hear the legendary, incomparable vocals of
The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson among many others singing your favorite holiday tunes. Christmas music gives the holiday a deeper meaning especially if you're an aficionado of high quality recordings. Below are my top 10 Christmas offerings that still bring my soul indescribable joy.
If I was to have made a list a short while ago of all the things I was least likely to do, seeing Diana Krall live would have been on there somewhere. It’s not that I hated the artistry of Mrs Elvis Costello in its entirety or that I didn’t appreciate her ability as a pianist or her particular style of re-arranging Jazz standards. It’s just that I found her voice underwhelming and, well, irredeemably dull. Dazzling vocal aesthetic is not necessarily a pre-requisite to my inclination towards an artiste (Nina Simone’s voice could hardly be described as pretty but it was hypnotic and she also happened to be one of the best musical interpreters to be immortalised on wax). I just failed to connect with Ms Krall’s output and no matter how much her legions of fans would have me think otherwise, I’ve always thought she was a bit overrated. Distinctive yes, but not in an exciting way.