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By Jeremy Schiffres, Daily and Sunday Freeman, Kingston, N.Y.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Songs of the season

Having now survived another annual bombardment of dreadful Christmas music by rock and pop music artists, I remain convinced that only five such tracks recorded since 1970 are worth listening to:

* "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
* "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," John Lennon and Yoko Ono
* "2,000 Miles," the Pretenders
* "I Believe in Father Christmas," Greg Lake
* "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," Bing Crosby and David Bowie

And I'll afford an honorable mention to Band Aid's 1984-85 hit "Do They Know It's Christmas?" It's not a very good song, but it went a long way toward raising awareness about (and money for) the problem of famine in eastern Africa, and it stands as the godfather of all charitable collaborations by popular musicians in the 28 years since its release.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Bill Olsen said...

Greg Lake most definitely. I love that even though his song was in a way about the commercialization of Christmas, Starbucks put it on their Christmas CD last year. Great list, write more posts.

December 27, 2012 at 6:11 PM 

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