give it to someone special

The bottom of the pool at UT made for some interesting reading over the weekend. When I was done with that, I perused The Daily Beacon. I've been waiting all week for last Friday's issue to appear online but it hasn't yet. I wanted to share a link to a well written commentary on the editorial page that made me laugh, even if I totally disagree with it. The unnamed writer trashed "All I Want for Christmas Is You," a song that I recently referred to as a pop classic. Here's what they wrote:

If you ever doubted that Christmas was a lusty, pagan solstice festival appropriated by the Church to lure Germanic tribes and, later, integrated into a Santa-industrial complex to generate much-needed end-of-the-year revenues for multinational corporations, this decidedly unchristian song should convince you. In it, [Mariah] Carey repetitively wails that what the millionaire chanteuse wants for Christmas is not world peace, an end to African famines (think "Do They Know It's Christmas") or even federal aid for farmers. O no, she selfishly wants to sate her sentimental and carnal desires. Worse yet, this song is about fifteen times better than Wham!'s "Last Christmas" and the most mediocre excuse for a pop song ever, Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime."

The Beacon staff may be right about the lame McCartney tune but how dare they dis "Last Christmas." And there's a lot of that going around. A writer named Rick Ellis put Jimmy Eat World's version of "Last Christmas" ahead of the dreadful McCartney song on his list of the ten most annoying Christmas songs of all time. I praised the Jimmy Eat World song last November.

This morning, Whitney Matheson mentioned that the McCartney dreck is also her least favorite Christmas song. Rather than also slam "Last Christmas," she pointed us to a new blog devoted to the song and its many cover versions. I like cover songs, don't you?