SHAKIN' STEVENS – "Merry Christmas Everyone"

This has a bizarre fascination, despite – or perhaps because of – it being so tawdry and desperate.
Somehow it conjures up the picture of the singer as one of the Fathers 4 Justice singing this to himself while stuck up alone in a Santa costume on top of a public building forgotten by his kids, the media and the other F4J who never liked him anyway. Merry Christmas everyone!

Despite being initially a fan of Shakey I distinctly remember sitting in ‘Junior 1’ class saying (to a girl who’d stated she hoped this would be #1) that I hoped it’s eventual successor would beat it in time for Christmas. I think the outcome suited us both (for me in that the next song got to #1 at all) in the end hurrah.

Never heard it before, as far as I can remember. I usually try to block out whatever comes over the speaker system when Christmas shopping.

Yes, it’s cheap, and it’s not an uncommon trait for Christmas pop. But shouldn’t there be some kind of limit? I’m a big fan of Christmas in general – indecent amounts of delicious and unhealthy food, presents, tacky decorations, reruns of old films, booze – how could you go wrong? But no one over the age of ten could reasonably want it to be Christmas every day, not even as a fantasy. Once a year is quite enough. So why would a singer, or a songwriter, want to claim that they wish just that? It’s a very effective way of saying that the song is entirely disposable, merely an aural version of a Christmas card as Tom puts it.

After about two minutes, I had had more than enough. And then there’s a key change, and it goes on for two more minutes. Fantastic. It didn’t get any better with repeat listens, which didn’t exactly surprise me.

SwedenWatch: Nope, this appears to have been an exclusively British delight. The top spot over Christmas was claimed by a-ha and “Take on Me”. The only explicitly Christmas-themed song I could find around the holidays was actually “Christmas Time” by Bryan Adams, which got to number 19. I gave it a try, just out of curiosity, and it’s about as bad. Bizarrely, Bryan also wants every day to be Christmas. Perhaps he and Shaky could form some sort of Christmas commune.

Apparently this was held back from release in 1984 so as not to compete with Band Aid. If only his record company had been more reckless, we could have been spared it…

A certain someone in my life has a great fondness for Christmas music, and over the years I’ve developed it too, half-goofy and half-genuine, depending which album or performance we’re talking about. CDs I would once have passed by without a glance, by no-name performers on awful bargain-bin labels, are among our most treasured: ’70s disco produced some gems, as did ’90s Euro-disco, but the best are from the ’50s and ’60s, repackaged as lounge compilations in the ’90s, with performers like Lou Rawls, Dean Martin and Julie London. And if crooners don’t float your sleigh, you can even find the familiar standards performed on kazoos and powertools. Most of these we picked up in Australia, the US, or via import from Amazon.com in the 1990s.

The UK Christmas album market is a very different affair: half Cambridge choirs, half compilations of dreary ’70s and ’80s Christmas pop, and half of that remixed into 70 minutes of musical sage-and-onion by Jive Bunny. We own next to none of those CDs, but you sure do hear enough of them every December, Wonderful Christmastiming you to tears every time you go shopping.

All of which makes it even more amazing that to the best of my memory I had never heard this before today. Or else I’ve forgotten it immediately every time I’ve heard it. That would make sense, actually, as only a few hours after watching the video I’m struggling to remember how it went.

In the same way that I heard Whitney on my family’s UK travels that December, I must have heard this, but it honestly doesn’t register. My memory of that Christmas is of a B&B in York where our “host” was almost resentful of our custom: “Australians! Typical,” she sniffed, as if we had come all the way from the colonies just to annoy her. Merry Christmas everyone.

I never thought much of Shakey as a kid and don’t give him much thought now, although I’ll concede that his first two UK number ones had their charms (they were reasonable hits in Oz too). But it’s flabbergasting that he notched up four: more than Adam Ant, Madness, and plenty of other worthier contemporaries. Maybe they should all have tried their hand at a bland Christmas song with cheesy Nordic video. Hey, imagine a 1981 Adam Ant Christmas single! Saaaaanta deliver / Your presents or your life…

I’d give that a lot more than 2, which is all I’d give this.

This one’s new to me too. ‘Salright I suppose. Agree that its trip-trip-tripping beat suggests shopping through the snow (or something). I’m guessing that it was knocked off McCartney/Wings’ ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ (it’s what I’d not-so-subtlely search-and-steal from if you gave me half an hour to come up with a bearable new Xmas tune).

I guess Whitney’s other woman song was just too profane to work as a de facto Xmas number, the way diva-explosions normally can and do (the ‘you’ can always be, additionally, God). ‘Santa’s other woman’ would, however, have been amusing. Not so funny is Whitney massacring (the truly beloved) ‘Have yourself a merry little Xmas…’ about 2.30 into this.

Shaky’s pre-hits past of CPGB benefits, Peel sessions, punk associations, supporting the Stones etc has been mentioned with regards to other No 1s. But the semi-underground connections didn’t end there – one of the early hits (not a No 1) was Marie, Marie by the Blasters, from LA. Marie, Marie was recorded twice by the Blasters – once on their debut album for a tiny indie run by one Rockin’ Ronnie Weiser, and again for their first album for Slash. Whichever version Shaky based his cover on, he (or his management) deserve credit for even knowing it existed.

Those who want to know more about this genuinely remarkable – not necessarily for artistic reasons – man are directed to this equally remarkable book, which some strange soul from Holland has transcribed and posted online: http://www.s-stevens.nl/main_frame.htm

As an aside, anyone remember the time he went a bit doolally on some TV show? Was it swapshop and he’d been on the ale all night? Something like that.

Since I’ve lived outside the UK for most of the last 8 years I was expecting this to give me some pang of nostalgia, but no, it’s just a cheap, tacky cash-in. And what IS he doing with all those children? AND it seems to go on forever.
Shakey was the top selling male artist in the singles chart for the 80s, but was he ever actually good? I remember seeing a clip of him drunk and rocking out on a variety show, but can’t seem to find it now.

It’s interesting – and also quite common – that for many artists their biggest hit is the song they seem to personally care about the least. Certainly it seems that way with Stevens. He’d avoided the “supermarket own brand Elvis” trap in the past through the enthusiasm of his performances, but here he falls right into it. Perhaps the delay of a year before it was finally released contributed to the stale feeling of the record. If it were released a year earlier, it wouldn’t have been #1, but had it been done in the more uptempo style of “Rocking Good Way”, it would have been a better record by far.
The single is significant to me for two reasons. First, ’85 was my last year as a child, before puberty set in, and the song sums up my boredom with childhood by that point. Second – ostensibly for part of a school project but basically because of my increasing obsession with pop music – I was tracking the week by week movements of singles up and down the chart. On a huge piece of graph paper. Without giving away the “surprise” this hits major paydirt with the next #1.

A couple of years back I wrote a little piece on The 20 Worst Singles of All Time and as this was the only chart topper amongst them I must nominate it as the worst number one ever. It’s just the atrocious lyrics – banality as a weapon – the relentless stream of cliches delivered without a trace of irony and there’s nothing of note in the music to distract you. At least that almost-as-bad McCartney song had some interesting harmonic ideas. And what makes it worse if you missed the lyrics the first time round he sings them right through again in the second half of the song (a device used to much better effect in “Enola Gay”). It’s sad that this has taken its place among Slade,Pogues,Greg Lake,Jona Lewie as part of the Christmas canon.

This was written by Bobby Heatlie who also wrote the execrable Japanese Boy for Aneka. It’s also a second chart topper of sorts for Dave Edmunds (as producer) but he should have known better.

This was Shaky’s swan song as a number one artist; his chart placings declined remorselessly afterwards I think mainly because Bros then Kylie and Jason took away the pre-teen market he’d had pretty much to himself.

#4 – “I distinctly remember constructing the lineage of male solo singers as Elvis Presley-Cliff Richard-Shakin’ Stevens” – as marx forgot to say, history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce, third time as slightly pointless anecdote that rapidly outstays its welcome…

Guaranteed to be wheeled out at Xmas until the apocalypse. Somewhere there will be a nursing home in the not too distant future containing messrs Stevens, Holder and Wood. All 3 of them getting tip top geriatric care paid for by the royalties earned on their respective festive offerings.

Of the three festive tracks, Shaky’s is representative of that Santa Land attraction in the New Forest (or was it The Forest Of Dean?)last year that was merely a tent in a muddy field adorned with cheap tinsel containing a piss poor Father Christmas and a couple of goats.

i’m a total sucker for xmas songs so i feel a lot more affection for this than most others seem to, but yes, it is pretty shoddy. what bothers me now though (and here is where snoball’s research project (#20) may at last come into it’s own) is how it managed to stay at number one until 11 January? surely xmas songs are all about getting you into that christmas feeling while you do the preparations (those last few days before the 25th are always the bit of xmas i enjoy the most)*, and sound all melancholy and post coital by boxing day. these people buying it on wet january wednesdays must have *loved* it.

*i’m not the biggest gavin and stacey fan, but there was a scene in last year’s special where the james corden one was driving around doing errands while bellowing along to ‘do they know it’s christmas’ that captured this feeling magically.

“Well I like it,” said Florence … hopefully.

I’m with Pink C on this – maybe because I’m a total sucker for Christmas and even more so now I’ve got three kids, the youngest of whom will be 3 next month and will totally love it when the tree goes up. So I’m prepared to give many (though by no means all) Christmas hits an easier ride. Although no-one would claim great artistic merit for this one, it’s instant nostalgia for the whole Crimble process, all the clichés rolled into one, and as comfy as Shaky’s nice woolly jumper. I don’t know whether it was filmed in Santa’s real home in Finland, but it gives off that cosy winter glow.

And the story of how a rocker who’d been plugging away since 1968, gaining much respect and little commercial success, suddenly became one of the biggest pop stars in the country for the first half of the 80s is a heartwarming Christmas tale in itself. He’s not exactly up there in the pantheon of pop, but it was fun to have him around. God bless us every one.

Snap. I love Christmas. Lovely, lovely Christmas. The whole of December is Christmas to me and I look forward to opening the first door of the advent calendar, wheeling out the Elvis albums (both of them), and confusing the neighbours with Rotary Connection’s freak flag version of Silent Night. A couple of years back I made a girl group xmas mix and it’s BEAUTIFUL!

But Christmas doesn’t dull my critical faculties. No. This is the most mechanical, lifeless Christmas hit ever. You can hear Shaky pull back his pink satin sleeve several times during the record’s duration, checking his watch. I imagine he got home from the studio, played Elvis’s Santa Claus Is Back In Town, and thought ‘oh shit’.

No mention of Shaky here: http://www.hipchristmas.com

1. It’s a kind of low-quality low-price electrical and toy store, distinguished by i. its byzantine catalogue-ordering-collection system in the physical shops and ii. its total domination of TV advertising space in the run up to every Christmas, which means it’s indelibly associated with the tatty side of the festive season (in my mind at least). Most of its ads cheerfully acknowledge that it’s a bit rubbishy.

2. Well, “White Christmas” is still the biggest selling single EVER in the US, isn’t it? What happened in Britain was Slade, basically – they saw a gap, filled it, and legitimised the idea of bands doing a “Christmas single” for about 15-20 years after. Plus a successful Christmas single is an incredibly stable source of royalty income.

3. I will talk about the Darkness record a bit when we eventually got to the single which beat it to #1. By that time, though, making an Xmas single was a deliberately kitschy move, more so even than the rest of their material. I liked them too, as it happens.

@33: Other/better ideas… well, in the English-speaking world, it’s no surprise that the southern hemisphere countries don’t make as big a deal of Christmas music; Christmas has a different feel there, and everyone’s getting into a summer-music mood by then, stuff that plays well on the car stereo while you’re out and about – not sleigh bells and choirs. In Britain, people stay indoors in December, because it’s dark by four o’clock, so indoor pursuits like listening to music and watching Christmas telly are much bigger. Christmas day in Oz means taking your new bike out for a spin in the sunshine; here it means staying in and watching every Bond film ever made.

But that’s only part of it. Plenty of the US has a wintry Christmas too (although not as dark as here; more snow, more daylight hours), so they’re right into Christmas music as well; but they produced tons of really good stuff in the ’50s, which has filled that traditional role ever since. New Christmas songs in America are like saplings in an old forest, struggling to find the sun in the shadow of giants.

Britain didn’t seem to produce many big Christmas singles in the 1950s and ’60s (can anyone suggest some? Or was it all carols by candlelight?), so they had to wait for Slade et al to pick up the pop baton. There was a rush of songs for a decade, and then it tailed off for similar reasons: a set of standards had become established, and new songs had a hard time competing. The Darkness managed it by evoking those ’70s hits, which was a canny move, because the Christmas pop sound in Britain is the sound of the ’70s, from Slade through to this tail-end throwback of Shakey’s. (Notable exception: Cliff in the 1990s, who was himself by then a throwback.)

This is my theory, which is mine, etc.

Rory – we had a similar discussion to this just over three years ago, before you and swanstep joined the comments crew, so it might be useful to link back to it. Bizarrely enough, the discussion arose here:
https://popular-number1s.com/ft/2006/10/england-world-cup-squad-1970-back-home/?cp=0
round about ## 16-27.

Briefly, setting aside the pre-chart “White Christmas”, there were a couple in the 50s such as “Christmas Alphabet”, but Christmas songs per se weren’t a singles chart staple until the 70s. The Beatles were the yuletide number one four years out of five, then there was a spate of kids-pressies novelty singles – Lily The Pink, Two Little Boys, Ernie, Long Haired Lover – before Slade changed everything.

Incidentally, Pink C at #28 – for the reason this stayed top until 11 January, you need to bear two things in mind – first the “official” chart date is the Saturday four days after the Tuesday on which the new chart was announced, so it was actually deposed on 7 January; secondly I *think* this was the first year in which we had a chart compiled between Christmas and New Year (Marcello will confirm or correct this), but the post-Christmas chart was and usually remains the slowest-moving of the year. Many a kid’s Christmas record token would have gone on keeping Shaky at number one on the chart announced on New Year’s Eve 1985. The rest of the top six that day comprised the previous and subsequent number ones, plus “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, “Walking In The Air” and “Last Christmas”, all no doubt consumed along with the turkey leftovers. Who was still buying “Merry Christmas Everyone” to put it at number 20 on 14 January is a different question!

Thanks for the link, Erithian – what an odd thread to have that discussion in.

I almost forgot the one other thing I was going to note about this song, which is its significance in terms of my autobiographical tale of travelling around the UK at the time. Shakey hit number one the very day that my family and I were wandering up and down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh – the only time I visited the city before upping sticks and moving here in 2001 (although I also visited the west of Scotland in 1992). We had plans to go further north, but the weather turned miserable after that; after spending a night in a small town near Stirling, we bypassed Glasgow and skated down the motorway to the Lake District, inching along the black ice past lorries that had slid off the road.

Re Slade wot dun it: I think Christmas and Glam just went naturally hand in hand. Gary Glitter was very nearly called Terry Tinsel (even if that’s a Leander/Glitter gag it still hopefully makes the point!). So 1973, with Glam totally dominant in the UK chart, we not only had Slade but Wizzard’s I Wish It Culd Be Christmas Everyday (just as vital for non Brits to hear – it starts with the sound of a cash register which may be a little smirky in the po-mo world but was brand new back in ’73) and Elton John’s Step Into Christmas which I’m guessing made a little noise in the States.

As for Lennon, the Beatles also produced a Christmas flexi for their fans every year.

And in the 50s, roundfaced Dickie Valentine was a one-man Xmas cheerleader: Christmas Alphabet (1955), Christmas Island (1956), Snowbound For Christmas (1957).

Looking at this (presumably) US-originated list, it seems ever so strange to see no Slade or Wizzard:

http://www.hipchristmas.com/lists/songs/index.php

… but the Elvis song at no.57, written by Tony Macaulay, is a great call – absolutely beautiful.

Tom #35: “I had to explain that for the last several years and foreseeable future [Christmas Number 1s] have been hijacked by Cowell.”

I wonder how far into the foreseeable future that might be though? There are signs with the “John and Edward” voting patterns and the reaction to the new audition format that the public are beginning to try to subvert the Cowell empire, and I wonder how far away X Factor is from properly jumping the shark? Most programme ideas have a shelf life, and just as Big Brother waned after nine or ten years, maybe there’s hope for a “normal” Christmas number one battle some way down the line?

John and Edward v Cliff in mid-December this year, wouldn’t you just love it?!

Am I the only British Popular contributer who’s never seen The X-Factor, etc, by the way? It’s not even a particularly deliberate oppositional stance on my part, I’ve just never thought to.

haha I didn’t really have any concrete song in mind, no — just a lot of resentful attitude deployed as an excuse for feeling unloved