Song of the Week: "River"

Oh the songs, oh the weeks, the many many weeks

"River"

Joni Mitchell

from Blue

1971

While defending my opinion about Die Hard not being a Christmas movie for reasons I explained last week, I was asked: what about music? What makes a song a "Christmas song"? The answer is both simpler and more complicated than the argument about movies.

It's simpler in that, sure, anything can be a Christmas song. All you need is sleigh bells. Pop that shit on anything, and it becomes a Christmas song. I heard a song by New Found Glory last week called "Ex-Miss" on a "Punk Rock Christmas" Apple playlist. There was nothing about this song that made it sound like anything different than any other New Found Glory song, except for the sleigh bells. There is no question that it's a Christmas song.

So it's simpler in that the qualifications are less strict, with sleigh bells being one example of this. Adding a Christmas tree doesn't necessarily make an action movie a "Christmas movie," but singing about a Christmas tree pretty much guarantees that a song is a "Christmas song."

But it's also more complicated, because cover versions of songs exist, and by covering a song in a certain context, you can change the song's meaning, beyond what the original artist intended. Movies stand by themselves as a piece of work; Die Hard is what it is, and no one can change that. With music, someone can take a song that is not a Christmas song, and then force it to become a Christmas song, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

The example thrown around the most during my and Pam's arguments about what constitutes Christmas music was Joni Mitchell's "River," which at this point has its reputation as a Christmas song secured, for better or worse. It doesn't even matter that Joni Mitchell certainly did not intend for it to be a Christmas song, or that the word "Christmas" is mentioned once in the first verse and only once more when it repeated in the final verse, and even then the idea of Christmas is far removed from the point that Joni Mitchell is trying to make. It doesn't matter! The song has been covered over 400 times, and most of those covers are on Christmas albums, and so the song is a Christmas song.

This kind of makes me feel weird! Not that I even have a stake in Joni Mitchell fandom—Blue is in Pam's Top Ten All Time, I think it's just okay—so like I don't feel the need to "defend" the integrity of her craft or anything. But the idea of misinterpreting an artist's intentions for commercial gain just kind of makes me feel a little icky. By singing "River" at Christmas, you are killing the author.

I suppose it helps that it's a good song. The same argument cannot be made for "Hallelujah," a shitty song by any artist—Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Shrek, doesn't matter—that has in recent years been entered into the Christmas canon on the backs of the Pentatonix, who are terrible. I join the fight against the claim that "Hallelujah" is a Christmas song, because 1) it's not, 2) it doesn't mention Christmas or take place on Christmas or feature any signature Christmas sound like sleigh bells or glockenspiels, 3) it's a bad song, and so why should I be forced to hear it during the best time of year?

If I'm making that argument, though, we'd have to consider that any song could be a Christmas song if we wanted it to be. Add sleigh bells to "Sister Jack" by Spoon, and bam, it's a Christmas song. Change the holiday on "Casimir Pulaski Day" Sufjan Stevens and pop it on a Christmas covers playlist. Shit, man, why didn't Kelly Clarkson sing "Since U Been Gone" but make it "Since You Been Good" and make it about Santa's Naughty List and include it on When Christmas Comes Around...? Anything is possible when the boundaries surrounding the Christmas music genre come tumbling down.

As with the Die Hard argument, I concede to the fact that none of this is all that important. It's not like I'm getting upset when I hear "River" in December. Whatever it takes to get through the holidays, man. Speaking of which: Christmas is officially over. Hope y'all had a good one. The "Christmas music" argument is officially retired for the season, and is packed away in the cellar, along with the decorations and the fake tree. Time to pull out the next argument: What makes an "Easter song"? Is "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" the best Easter song of all time? Let's chat.