![]() You've probably never heard the original version of "Let It Snow."Īfter charting for the first time in 2018, Dean Martin's "Let It Snow" reached another important milestone in 2019: An official music video for the song was uploaded to YouTube in November. ![]() The full title of "Let It Snow" is a mouthful.Ĭahn and Styne's tune was first recorded in 1945 and released under the full title "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Today, the wordy title is commonly shortened to the simpler "Let It Snow." 4. Instead of heading to the beach, they decided to stay inside and write a song that would transport them to the winters of their youths. Lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne had to use their imaginations when writing "Let It Snow." The two were struggling to endure one of the hottest days on record in Southern California in July 1945. "Let It Snow" was written during a heatwave. So feel free to continue singing "Let It Snow" into the New Year and beyond. Fire, popcorn, and winter weather are all mentioned, none of which are uniquely Christmas-y. Follow him on Twitter at on Faceboo k."Let It Snow" has become a regular part of radio stations' holiday playlists, along with tracks like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and " All I Want for Christmas Is You." But unlike those songs, "Let It Snow" contains no references to Christmas. Stream a Playlist of 79 Punk Rock Christmas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Religion & Moreīased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. The Story of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the Boozy Ballad That Has Become One of the Most Beloved Christmas Songs of All Time ![]() Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rocking & Swinging Christmas Albums: From James Brown and Johnny Cash to Christopher Lee & The Ventures Stream 48 Hours of Vintage Christmas Radio Broadcasts Featuring Orson Welles, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Ida Lupino & More (1930-1959)ĭavid Bowie & Bing Crosby Sing “The Little Drummer Boy” (1977) ![]() What Makes Music Sound Like Christmas Music? Hear the Single Most Christmassy Chord of All Explained But take it from me, an American living in Korea: even on the other side of the world, you can’t escape its songs. But then, as Christopher Ingraham writes in The Washington Post, “the postwar era really was an exceptional time in American history: jobs were plentiful, the economy was booming, and America’s influence on the world stage was at its peak.” Thus “what we now think of as the holiday aesthetic isn’t just about a particular time of the year - it’s also very much about a particular time of American history.” This aligns with the perception that Christmas has turned from a religious holiday into an American one. That most popular Christmas songs still come from the 1940s and 50s ( a Spotify playlist of which you can find here) has given rise to theories of a Baby-Boomer conspiracy to preserve their own childhoods at all costs to the culture. And by the late 1940s television was growing out of radio, and through the 1950s the pair set holiday living rooms around the country aglow with musical performances.” “ Irving Berlin invested ‘White Christmas’ with the sort of meterological longing that comes from living in Southern California, but troops picked up on the sentiment, making the song a classic in this regard.” This also happened to be the zenith of the golden age of radio ( a compilation of whose Christmas broadcasts we featured last year here on Open Culture). “By the 1940s, radios were a default presence in most American homes. “It’s no coincidence that the boom in Christmas tunes came during World War II, when tens of thousands of American soldiers were abroad defending their country, no doubt longing for the simple warmth of home,” writes The Atlantic‘s Eric Harvey. That boom began, as the Cheddar Explains video at the top of the post tells it, with Crosby’s Christmas Day 1941 rendition of “White Christmas,” just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The year before that brought “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” the year before that, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” That was recorded first and most definitively by Bing Crosby, the singer most closely identified with the 1940s Christmas-music boom. Even “The Christmas Song,” whose most beloved version was recorded by Nat King Cole, wasn’t written until 1945 (as was “Let It Snow”).
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