Album of the Week: The Christmas Album

Now presenting your 2023 Record Club Holiday Album. If you'd like to see all of our holiday album winners and losers in the previous polls from 2019-2022, check out the supplemental archives, and scroll all the way down to the bottom. Happy holidays, Record Club!!!!

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WEEK 255 — December 17-23, 2023

The Christmas Album

by Neil Diamond

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY MAJORITY VOTE

HOW IT WAS CHOSEN: Here are the results of our holiday poll, along with a reveal as to who chose each option.

• Pretty Paper by Willie Nelson (chosen by Sunny) — 4 votes
• Christmas in the Stars by Meco Menardo (chosen by Joe) — 5 votes
• Christmas on the Mountain by Craig Duncan (chosen by Pam) — 5 votes
• Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas by Ella Fitzgerald (chosen by Sam) — 5 votes
• Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti (chosen by Nate) — 5 votes
• Have You Heard of Christmas? by Matt Rogers (chosen by Rachel S.) — 6 votes
• Christmas with the Chipmunks, Volume 1 by Alvin and the Chipmunks (chosen by Gary) — 8 votes
• The Christmas Album by Neil Diamond (chosen by Melissa) — 11 votes

As for the "why this album had the most votes," I'll never pretend to know. Feel free to write a review for any of these albums, and I'll promise to publish them Friday morning with the rest of the Neil Diamond reviews.

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Christmas music, adult contemporary

RELEASED: September 22, 1992

LENGTH: 44:58

TRACKLIST:

1. O come, O come, Emmanuel / We Three Kings of Orient Are
2. Silent Night
3. The Little Drummer Boy
4. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
5. The Christmas Song
6. Morning Is Broken
7. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
8. White Christmas
9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
10. Jingle Bell Rock
11. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
12. Silver Bells
13. You Make It Feel Like Christmas
14. O Holy Night

LYRICS: Do you need lyrics for Christmas songs? If for some reason you do, they are at genius.com.

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Neil Diamond was born on January 24, 1941, in Brooklyn. He realized that he wanted to be a musician when he saw Pete Seeger perform at Jewish summer camp at the age of sixteen. Though he attended NYU on a fencing scholarship, he eventually settled on music as a career. He's one of the best-selling musicians of all time, purportedly selling 130 million records (so far). Three of his songs hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Sweet Caroline" is the song that we all know (though that peaked at #4). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in 2018. In January 2018, he announced that he would no longer be touring, due to a diagnosis of Parkinson's. He'll be celebrating his 83rd birthday next month.

DISCOGRAPHY: The Christmas Album is Diamond's 20th of 32 studio albums. The first was The Feel of Neil Diamond in 1966. The most recent is Classic Diamonds with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2020. This is Diamond's first of four Christmas albums, including The Christmas Album, Volume II, A Cherry Cherry Christmas, and Acoustic Christmas.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: Transcript from 2016 NPR interview

WATCHING SOME SHIT: "Christmas in Washington" in 2009 (apparently Obama is there!)

PREVIOUSLY ON RECORD CLUB: The Christmas Album is ranked as the 25th-best-selling Christmas album of all time. There is a shocking scarcity of Record Club alumni on that list! #8 Now That's What I Call Christmas! features the Beach Boys, and #19 A Very Special Christmas has Bruce Springsteen. That's it! Weird. Where's the Guster Christmas album? Where's the Ethel Cain Christmas album? Where's the JVKE Christmas album?!

Ah, Yoko Ono has a songwriting credit on this album. She might be the RC alumna with the most well-known Christmas original to her name. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

This is Record Club's sixth Christmas album (the fifth year we're doing this, but we had two Christmas albums last year): albums from Andrew Bird, Dolly Parton, Kelly Clarkson, the Beach Boys, and the Philadelphia Eagles. Really quickly, I'm going to go through the tracklist for The Christmas Album, and try to figure out which songs we've already heard before from other artists.

• "We Three Kings of Orient Are" — the Beach Boys
• "Silent Night" — the Philadelphia Eagles
• "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" — the Beach Boys; the Philadelphia Eagles
• "White Christmas" — Andrew Bird; the Beach Boys; the Philadelphia Eagles
• "Jingle Bell Rock" — Kelly Clarkson
• "O Holy Night" — Andrew Bird

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!