 |
| Darlene Love (left) performs "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" with Fantasia in this year's installment of a Christmas tradition. |
It's my favorite Christmas season song, mostly because it's not sticky sweet saccharine like most holiday songs, which are awful.
Most of them are so sentimental and icky that you go into a diabetic coma if you hear just 10 seconds of them. ("I'll Be Home For Christmas.") Or they're so deliriously happy that you wonder what kind of drug they're taking ("Santa Claus Is Coming To Town") Or they're so stupid and odious they make you want to throw up. ("Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer")
Not "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," popularized by Darlene Love. Musically it's an uplifting, take me to church melody. The lyrics are bittersweet. The emotional complexity of the song, at least compared to almost all other holiday songs, makes this one work
For 29 years, Darlene Love made it a tradition to sing this tune on David Letterman's show. Click on this mashup of her years on David Letterman for proof that Darlene Love sure isn't losing any of her glorious power as the hears go bh.
However, Letterman went off the air. So "The View" took it over, and now they're in their third year. Of course, as always, you will see and hear this year's video of her performance at the bottom of this post.
This year, Darlene Love got some help from Fantasia, the awesome R&B singer.
Love and her song have become such a national Christmas tradition that she's turned up elsewhere, too. Click on this link for a fun video of Darlene Love performing the song on "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" in which Love, Fallon, The Roots and Anna Kendrick perform the song accompanied by child classroom instruments, which is a regular feature on this show. It's a bit tinny but surprisingly good.
Without further delay, here's this year's Darlene Love's Christmas performance, with the fantastic Fantasia from this year. Merry Christmas everyone!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment