The Geek Girl's Guide to Christmas and Rock Music

Most styles, genres, and artists have hopped on the bandwagon and added their stamp in some way to Christmas/seasonal/holiday music. Yet its the cheeriest, cheesiest, oldest, and overplayed of it all that gets embraced, isn't it? Does "Feliz Navidad" make you feel loco? Is someone going to lose their own two front teeth if you hear the hippopotamus or Mariah Carey songs one more time? Have you even heard three different versions of "Carol of the Bells" (or some other song) within a twenty-five minute time frame?

Before you get grinchy and deck the halls in a different way over the airplay madness, here's a sample of rock-infused and (mostly) original holiday songs. I hope this list expands your own playlist or music collection.

Nearly all the bullet points contain links to their songs. Each reference has its own link, and the underlined text are links to songs or related things as well.

• “Run Rudolph Run” by Chuck Berry and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee

If you like oldies rock, you’ll like these OGs. You might even think of the first Home Alone film when you hear them. “Run Rudolph Run” was the soundtrack over the scene where the family rushed through the airport to catch their flight, and Kevin put on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” one of the first times he fooled the Wet Bandits into thinking people were actually home.

• “Do They Know its Christmas?” by Band Aid

Your favorite English/British rockers might have been part of this 1984 supergroup that sang the song for charity. From this song, we get “We Are the World”, and from both of these we get the Live Aid super concert that played a big part in: famine awareness and relief, the Bohemian Rhapsody film, and Queen’s career longevity. (see this article for the lineup of Band Aid, the background, and the legacy of the charity event.)

• “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses

The Waitresses were a post-punk band in the late seventies and early eighties. Their only other best-known hit is “I Know What Boys Like”. The song is a rom-com story of love interests who keep missing each other throughout the year. She never had the time to call and ask him out, they couldn’t find a good time to meet for lunch. She got a bad sunburn and had to turn him down in the summertime. He had car troubles and couldn’t make it to a Halloween party. Only when they both run into each other at “the only all-night grocery” does the story seem to have a happy ending.

Of course the title itself is a pun to “rap”, and the lyrics are delivered in a quasi-rap style as the genre was only rising in its popularity around 1981.

• Anything Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Pair Christmas carols and songs with arena rock and/or rock opera, and you have the popular work of Trans-Siberian Orchestra (or TSO)! Their live concerts are the closest young millennials get to the glory of eighties rock shows with their big-haired, head-banging musicians on a stage full of laser light displays, pyrotechnics, and moving/riser stage sets. Holiday radio stations like the hit, “Christmas/Sarajevo 12/24”, which is a metal mesh between “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Carol of the Bells”. A trio of guitar, violin, and cello open with about thirty seconds of the first song before the bass drops and riffing, roaring guitars carry into the Carol.

Even classical music has gotten a “TSO touch” as parts of The Nutcracker are features in “Nutrocker” and "A Mad Russian's Christmas". Even Pachabel’s "Canon in D" is part of their “Christmas Canon”. Holiday radio plays either the regal “proper” orchestral with a children’s choir vocals, or what I’ll call its “twin rock track” with the march played by the electric guitars, pulsing drums, and powerful female vocals.

• “She’s Right On Time” Billy Joel

This one might be my “cheat”. During his formal recording career, Billy didn’t cover or write distinct Christmas songs (he’s actually Jewish), but most of my playlists aren’t complete without Billy Joel. This is one of his more romantic-themed songs from the 1982 Nylon Curtain album. It makes the cut for this list as the lyrics sing of hanging the Christmas lights, putting up the Christmas tree, and stoking the fire as the significant other returns home apparently right in the nick of time (judging by the affectionately dorky music video. I didn't know it existed before writing this...)

• Newsboys- “Adoration” and Christmas! A Newsboys Holiday

The Newsboys are a pop/rock band well-known in the contemporary Christian music genre. A bit like some of their counterparts on this list, they got their start in the eighties, found prominence in the nineties, and have gone strong ever since.

Concerning their “Christmas work”, the original song, “Adoration” came first in 2003 from the worship-themed album of the same name. The song tells the story about the events of Jesus' birth from the perspective of one of the shepherds. Christian radio ran this track in-season until the 2010 release of the mini-album Christmas! A Newsboys Holiday where they cover: “All I Want for Christmas is You”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, “O Holy Night”, “Winter Wonderland”, and “The Christmas Song”. (In case there’s any confusion over the vocals between the 2003 and 2010 songs, the band changed frontmen in 2010. That could be a story for another day though.)

• “Rockin’ on Top of the World” by Steven Tyler

Done for Disney’s Polar Express film. The Aerosmith vocalist even has an elf-lookalike in the scene where the kids are just arriving to the North Pole and all the other elves are dancing and jamming like its a concert.

• Bruce Springsteen- “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”

The live recording that often gets airplay was from a concert at C.W. Post College in Brookville, New York, in 1975. I just like the sense of autonomy that was captured on this track, like Bruce talking into the song, asking the band and audience if they’ve been good this year, and eventually just cracking up for some reason on the tail end of the song.

From A Very Special Christmas

In 1987, an album series titled A Very Special Christmas began with proceeds benefiting the Special Olympics. Follow-up albums would go on to include a live concert recording, an acoustic variation, and a stylistic array of performances from big names from the eighties, nineties, and early two-thousands. Here are some of the rock products of the first few specials:

• Bruce Springsteen- “Merry Christmas Baby”
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers- “Christmas All Over Again” (fun fact: This song turns up in the second Home Alone film)
• John Mellencamp- “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
• U2- “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
• Bon Jovi- “I wish Everyday Could Be like Christmas”