Our Yearly Tradition: Darlene Love Gives Us "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"

Darlene Love (left)  performs "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"
with Fantasia in this year's installment of a Christmas tradition.

We have to do our yearly Christmas Eve tradition today: Darlene Love singing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home.)"

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!!!

Google Translate Really Improves Christmas Songs

Christmas carols are MUCH better after having been run
through Google Translate a couple times. 

A fun trend on YouTube and elsewhere is to use Google Translate and convert song words in English to some other language and back to English again, with hilarious results.  

Tis the season, so here's a couple videos that will let you know what I'm talking about, using holiday music. They're great time wasters, and I must say, the Google Translate versions of Christmas songs are a vast improvement over the original.

The first video is by Malinda Kathleen Reese. She uploaded it to YouTube a couple years ago, but it's still a great find.  (In a none-holiday moment, check out Reese's Google Translate version of Adele's hit "Hello." It's worth it. Even the Defense Secretary is involved. (Watch and listen to it, you'll see.)

She has a great voice, but the translations to the songs are hilarious. My favorite part is one of the songs gets into Saudi Arabian monetary policy. Who knew Saudi Arabian financial rules make sentimental holiday wishes. After this video, I got another one, below this:



Next, we have a very recent episode of Jimmy Fallon teaming up with Rebel Wilson to do Google Translate versions of other Christmas songs. In "Deck the Halls," we learn that ancient sparrows fight with Carol. (I don't know who Carol is or why the old sparrows are mad at her.)

Oh, and "Walking In A Winter Wonderland" becomes much better, with an awesome new name: "I Ran Through The Land Of Cold Unknowns"  Here it is:

8th Grader Should Just Be President Already With His Candidates' Voices

Jack Aiello went presidential hilariously during
his eight grade graduation this spring, and
now he's a viral sensation.  

I didn't touch it at the time when a video you'll see at the bottom of the post went viral in May, but I now can't resist, since the kid involved is becoming a political sensation.

Jack Aiello, 14, became a sensation during his 8th grade graduation speech from Thomas Middle School near Chicago last month.

That because he hilariously adopted the voices of top presidential contenders like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, along with our current president Barack Obama

As noted by NPR, Aiello even got the gist of each candidate's campaign philosphy during that graduation speech. When he was doing Sanders, he said his school had great cinnamon rolls. However: "I do have one improvement for them, though: We need to make them free.

"Why should students have to pay for their own cinnamon rolls? Doesn't make sense. What we need is a cinnamon roll revolution."

When Aiello did Trump we hear: "Congratulations, you are getting to hear a speech from the magnificent Donald Trump. And let me just tell you that Thomas has been such a great school. Quite frankly, it's been fantastic."

When he moved on to Ted Cruz, religion naturally mixed in: "Let me start by saying this: God bless the great school of Thomas."

Aiello the captured Hillary Clinton's rising crescendo common in her speeches: Teachers at Thomas were "Our champions. They've given us the skills to get us through sixth grade, and through seventh grade and eighth grade and now we're going to take those skills and apply them to high school!"

Jimmy Fallon was so impressed with Aiello that he had him on his Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.  Aiello played "Little Trump," who turned out to be the only person who could be (big) Donald Trump's Vice Presidential running mate.

Here's the awesome viral video from the graduation, followed by his appearance with Jimmy Fallon



And here's the video from Jimmy Fallon:

Brady Bunch-Like All Star "We Are The Champions" Is Pretty Fun.

Ann A-List bunch of singers did this
Jimmy Fallon video. Pictured in this
screen grab: Fallon, The Roots, Carrie Underwood,
Ariana Grande, Sam Smith.  

In honor of the Superbowl, the Brady Bunch Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and a bunch of celebrity musicians decided to make a fun little video of the Queen classic "We Are the Champions"

For those of you with post Superbowl hangovers, the a capella dity is fun to watch.

Heck, even for those of us who don't have hangovers, it's fun to watch. It's set up like the opening credits to "The Brady Bunch" which makes it cool.  

(Is that a sly congratulatory nod to winning New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady? Hmmmm.)

The A-listers on the video are Carrie Underwood, Sam Smith, Ariana Grande, Blake Shelton, Usher Meghan Trainor, One Direction and Christina Aguiler, who of course tries to steal the star power.

No matter if you're bumming over the Seattle Seahawks loss or the New England Patriots' win, you'll be humming this for the rest of the day.

Stevie Nicks, Jimmy Fallon Drag My Heart Around In A Good Way

One of my extreme favorite songs ever is the 1981 duet by Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around."  

Jimmy Fallon, dressed as Tom Petty, joins
Stevie Nicks in re-creating the "Stop Draggin' My
Heart Around" video. 

It's ominious and dark and dramatic and cynical, with it's minor chords and full throttle, echoing tone.  Every time it comes on the radio when I'm driving around, I blast the sound as high as it will go and sing along.

I like the complicated relationship the lyrics describe, a relationship that's not exactly love, but tired, world weary duty:

"People running 'round loose in the world
Ain't got nothin' better to do
Than make a meal of some bright eyed kid
You need someone looking after you."

The original music video for the awesome song is no great shakes. Just Petty and his band, the Heartbreakers, and Nicks in the studio singing.  But it's such a great song the video is fine.

This week, Jimmy Fallon, who often does this sort of thing, re-created that video by dressing up as Tom Petty and joining the real Stevie Nicks for another round of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"

And I do like the original video and version of the song better than Fallon/Nicks, this is still a treat.

Below, the first video you'll see is that Fallon/Nicks re-creation, followed by the original video. Whatever you think of this all, you know I'll be singing the song in my head all day.

Watch: