It’s been six years since Vampire Weekend’s last album, the extraordinary Modern Vampires of the City.
Lots has happened since then, including the departure of key band member Rostam Batmanglij and a relationship between frontman Ezra Koenig and one of my celebrity girlfriends, Rashida Jones, which resulted in the birth of their first child last summer.
Wrapping up this extremely festive edition of ‘What the Kids are Listening To’ is the Hot 100’s #11 track, Nat King Cole’s ‘The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You).’
Cole came within one slot of landing his third Top 10 hit and his first since 1963.
Cole recorded several versions of this song, with the 1961 one (heard here) considered definitive. But the original, stripped-down 1946 version is arguably even sweeter.
In contrast to yesterday’s track, sung by a 13-year-old Brenda Lee, today’s Christmas song was recorded by Burl Ives when he was pushing 60.
This week’s #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 is best remembered as a song from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special. Ives voiced the narrator, Sam the Snowman.
When Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ hit #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week, it was her 13th song to reach the Top 10 of that chart. She was a hit machine.
In fact, through the decade of the 60s, only The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Ray Charles landed more songs on Billboard’s U.S. charts.
Even more impressive is that she scored most of those hits before reaching adulthood. The pint-sized singer was a regular performer on TV and radio when she was only 9 years old and landed her first #1 (‘I’m Sorry’) at 16.
The rest of this week’s Hot 100 entries are Christmas songs. I thought maybe that was a common occurrence during the season, but looking at this time of year over the past half decade or so, I don’t see anything like this year’s influx of Christmas titles.
Are people just in a jollier mood? Trying to forget that Donald Trump is the U.S. president? Something else?
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