Switched on Pop - Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

White Christmas holds the Guinness World Record for most singles sold and has been covered over 500 times. Pop stars from Elvis to Ella have recorded it, with interpretations from doo-wop to country to punk rock. With new covers each year, it seems listeners have not grown tired of this Tin Pan Alley chestnut. We use our scientific formula for holiday hit success to break down what makes this song so timeless. FeaturingBing Crosby - White ChristmasThe Beatles - Christmas Time Is HereWhitney Houston - Have Yourself a Merry Little ChristmasJackson 5 - Santa Clause Is Coming to TownThe Beatles - In My LifeFrank Sinatra - White ChristmasKenny G - White ChristmasNashville Cast - White ChristmasLady Gaga - White ChristmasThe Drifters - White ChristmasElvis - White ChristmasElla Fitzgerald - White ChristmasBeach Boys - White ChristmasDean Martin - White ChristmasKaty Perry - White ChristmasKelly Clarkson - White ChristmasRascal Flatts - White ChristmasMichael Bolton - White ChristmasMichael Bublé and Shania Twain - White ChristmasCarol Of The Bells by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Artist: http://audionautix.com/ Deck the Hall, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Angels We Have Heard by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=004&page=1Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, it is my favorite time of year. Do you know what that is? It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's the time of the year that we get to talk about our favorite holiday songs because they've been playing now for a couple of weeks. They go for six weeks or so from Thanksgiving until the new year.

And they're just wonderful. I couldn't agree more. and the one we are discussing today is like the UR holiday song. It is the Uber holiday song. It is the Mount Olympus of holiday songs. It actually might be just the biggest song, period. Today we're going to be talking about White Christmas, which actually holds the Guinness World Record for most single soul of any song.

Wow. Wait. Rewind that back for me one more time. White Christmas, originally recorded by Bing Crosby and having been covered over 500 times, is the number one selling single of all time. Okay, I'm just wrapping my head around that fact. So this is like in front of the Beatles, Winnie Houston. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Michael Jackson.

Like, White Christmas. Technically, it's tied with Elton John's candle. the wind. Oh, wow. Okay. Because of technical errors about when the charts formed. Interesting. But it has sold more singles, over 50 million singles. That's bananas. So today what I want to do is ask the question, why is it so successful? It was in a Hollywood film originally, but I want to suggest that we can go beyond the success of Hollywood marketing and look at what internally in the song makes it so adaptive, so endlessly lovable, just, the biggest hit possible. Right on. Let's dig into White Christmas, the number one selling single of all time.

That's so crazy. And there are so many additions that we could listen to, but we should listen to one of the originals by Bing Crosby to kick it off. Of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know where the tree tops glistened. And children Listen To hear Slay bells in the snow Last year

On our holiday episode We created a formula Of Christmas song success Do you recall? Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah I remember But you might need to remind me Some of the details

Of that formula I've been drinking a lot of egg nog Recently I can't think straight So first, a song has got to be nostalgic. Indeed. Second, it has got to be immensely coverable. Right.

And third, it has to have sleigh bells. Yes. Okay, so those are the three. It's a very simple formula in a way. That's the scientifically proven formula of Christmas song success. Yeah. So I guess the first question is, does White Christmas correspond to this formula? Mm-hmm.

Exactly. starting with nostalgia. So I looked into this song quite a bit. I've listened to it dozens and dozens of times over the last couple of days. And I have found it just seeped in nostalgia. In particular, I find four elements of the music and lyrical interplay. Just, oh, amazing. Are you hearing nostalgia anywhere on the track yourself?

Yeah, I'm ruminating on that question right now. I mean, certainly in the lyrics, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know. I mean, that's an incredibly nostalgic image there or thought. Yeah, exactly. So that's sort of the first thing that I thought of is that from the start, the song begins in a dream. Right. Rather than starting in the present, it's starting in an imagined space, a place that anybody can reach into. And musically, the song supports.

the dream with this really beautiful yet very simple melody. What Bing Crosby is doing here is singing chromatically. Oh, yeah, totally. Right. He's saying he's dreaming of a white Christmas. And the dream, I think, is represented in this chromaticism, you know, meaning he's playing notes that are outside of the scale. It creates this dream world-like quality.

Yeah. Whoa. Very nice, Charles. I totally see that. By using these chromatic notes that don't belong to the major diatonic home scale, we are put immediately, like you said, in this kind of dream world. Right. Slightly unreal.

Yeah, it's very, oftentimes we use chromaticism, these notes outside of the scale as a way of adding color and depth and richness to a melody. And here it begins right from the start. We have this chromaticism. putting us in the dream. Right. Not to belabor this point too much, but if we played this melody in not chromatically,

the opposite of chromatically, diatonically, just using the notes of the scale that you're supposed to, it would sound like this. Which is really boring. Yeah, or certainly not as sort of supernatural or something as the creepy chromaticism of the actual. Yes, too simple almost. And so supporting this dreamy chromatic quality,

I think the next most obvious element, which makes this deeply nostalgic, would be just the surrounding sound time signature instrumentation, right? The song is melancholic. It's incredibly slow. The dreamy quality is felt by the slow pace of the song, and it's awash in the era's music of sort of rich strings and this baseline that makes us think of older music. We even get these carolers later on in the song. It feels like we're in the musical past. Right. It's very wholesome. It's very simple.

It's very nostalgic. Yeah, I totally see that. There's something happening here, which is my absolutely favorite thing that happens in pop music, period. Okay, I already know what this is. What is it? It's the minor four chord. Yes, the minor four chord.

May your days be merry and Christmases. Yeah, this one has such a lovely example. I immediately thought of you, Charlie. Yeah. So the minor four chord is this technique of, I guess I would describe it as moving something from a happy major chord and then surprising us with this descending what would be chromatic note.

This colored note that takes us into the minor and it just makes you want to cry every time it happens. Yeah, it's such a heartbreaking moment. Even when you know it's coming, it's something that you can't help but feel moved by, I think. And it's been set up so well across the ages of music. I guess this would be one of the earlier examples that I know in pop music history, but of course it's employed throughout love songs in the history of popular music. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. Do you have any favorite examples of the minor four? Yeah, I mean, one of the most achingly precise ones that comes to mind is towards the end of the Beatles in my life, where he just sort of hangs on this minor four chord before resolving to the final tonic chord. And it's just an exquisitely painful and beautiful moment. People use this all the time. I love the minor four. So anyways, this is just one of the greatest examples of the minor four.

chord as he resolves back home he walks through this minor four and you just take a listen and you it just wl wants to melt your heart yeah it gets you right in the gut and i can see what you mean that there's something about his use of the cord here that is very nostalgic because i think the feeling of nostalgia is kind of a mix of happy and sad emotions at once kind of a celebration of times past and also a longing for those times and an understanding that they are in the past and they're not coming back. A certain bitter sweetness is, I think, an integral part of the feeling of nostalgia and that kind of chord progression really captures that.

It's that once beautiful, happy major and then kind of sad longing minor and that's the duality of nostalgia that we feel. I love that it happens over this line. May your days be merry and bright. So there's Be merry and bright And may all Christmas So there's almost a dual meaning to this

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright It's suggesting a message of hope But there's a music of melancholy Whoa, yeah Even as the lyrics are brightening, The music itself is kind of darkening And here again when he sings May Your Days be Merry and Bright

we get to the highest note in the song. Interesting. So this contrast of height and wishfulness against a music which might be minor and wistfulness. Yeah, well, which is literally going down as the major third descends to a minor third, kind of almost like a battle between the melody and the harmony of the melody trying to move upwards and the harmony trying to move downwards. That tension seems to encapsulate the feeling of nostalgia in a way. Yeah, absolutely.

And at this point, we could pivot towards talking about the second criteria of the Christmas song formula, which is coverability. Yes, what do you have to say about coverability? Well, I'm just thinking about your analysis of this song right now, and something that's really striking about it is that this song is very easy to sing. And its composer, Irving Berlin, is kind of a master of this. That's exactly right. of writing these melodies that move very cleanly from one note to another that are divided into very stable and elegant phrases that never go too high or too low, that it couldn't be sung by just about anyone of any age with any musical background.

I mean, this is kind of a masterful composition in its economy of means. It's just laid out so beautifully and so, what's the word, with such kind of equilibrium as you were talking about. Yes. I think it's these characteristics that make this song very easy to cover and as we'll see, very easy to kind of put your own stamp on as well. You're absolutely correct.

This song wants to be adapted. And it asks for it, I think actually within the composition of the piece, not just in the melody, but in so many of the elements. In fact, White Christmas was originally a film. And we know that it's meant to be sung together because the film actually ends the camera, pulls out and everybody in this giant banquet hall is singing white Christmas

together in chorus. And so I think that the choral nature, the simplicity of the melody, has invited everyone from Sinatra to Kenny G. To the cast of Nashville. There are over 500

covers of this song. And I said that within the composition itself, aside from just the melody, there's some other things that are asking for people to participate in creating their own versions. And I hear it just after we get this big choral part where Bing Crosby drops out and the chorus comes in like a bunch of carolers. Crosby later comes back and harmonizes by whistling over the top of the song.

He actually invents a new melody. Oh, cool. Which is sort of in counterpoint to the original melody. Oh, cool. So the original recording implicitly offers an invitation to other artists to put their own spin on this song. The song is immensely simple. It basically has two verses, and they get repeated over and over with different interpretations of carolors and whistling. And other artists come in to fill in the missing bits.

So in 1944, we get a cover by Sinatra. And Sinatra adds the third most essential element to creating a successful Christmas hit. he brings in the sleigh bells. Where the treetops glisten. And kiddies listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow. There we go. And his cover is actually more or less on point, very similar to the original. he does in the introduction of the piece

add a reference to jingle bells. So I think an appropriate place to bring in the sleigh bells. Indeed. And just another example of taking the song and interpreting it in a new way. Lady Gaga did a cover of the song. Recently, she did a live cover and invents a whole new verse.

This song is just too short. It's such a beautiful Christmas song, but it's only one verse. So I added one extra one. Here it goes. I am... dreaming of a white snowman with a carrot nose and charcoal eyes Whoa, okay, I love that.

Wait, wait, I want to invent a verse for this song, Charlie. Can we do that later? We can do that later. Absolutely. Nice. But going to the top of what you said in terms of the simplicity of the melody, I think this is what makes this song so interpretable. Is that a word?

Sure. We'll give a to you. Why not? It's super simple chords. It's basically just these two simple stanzas. It's easy to harmonize. And for the next many decades, people start to interpret this song in all sorts of new ways. And I think probably the most famous of all would be the 1954 version of White Christmas by The Drifters.

So I'll play that. Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where those streets are Listen And listen Slave bells in the snow Oh yeah

This is my jam Tell me about the drifters name Drifters were an important black R&B group Of the 1950s Who were one of the ensemble who were kind of active in moving vocal music from the smooth sounds of duop to the more kind of raw sounds of R&B and soul. The mid-50s was definitely the inflection point for that transition. And I think you can kind of hear that happening in this song where we have kind of a doo-op bass,

B-A-S-E, like a du-op foundation happening. But then on top of that, they're kind of introducing a little more edge, a little more blues, a little more rawness in the vocals into it. So you can hear it kind of right on that precipice point between those two styles. And I wonder if this interpretation was created because Crosby's original was actually the first time that he appeared on black-oriented charts. It did so well just broadly that it made it into the Harlem hit parade for three weeks. No way. Yeah. Interesting, yeah.

And I think it's definitely possible to hear this cover by the drifters as a way of like almost planting their flag on this song and kind of making an argument that this song belongs now as much to black culture as it does to white culture, that their interpretation of it discovers these blues possibilities and these kind of funky syncopations that are definitely not present in the binkroclature. Crosby original, and yet, as you were talking about, are sort of there latently just waiting to be unearthed by the right interpreters. Yes, absolutely. What I find so curious about the first couple decades of covers of White Christmas is that they really interpret the song into new genres. So we'll just go through a quick catalog of some of the best. Yeah.

In 1957, Elvis makes his famous country version of the song. You can tell from the opening piano line, he is referencing Western swing country music. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Just a few years later, 1960, Ella Fitzgerald takes the song into the jazz territory. Right, right, very good. In 64, Beach Boys, of course, introduce a surf version of the song. But by 1966, with Dean Martin's cover of the song, we start to go back to the original, and the interpretation into new genres really halts, and we get these covers which become much more nostalgic for the original sound.

May your days be merry. In Dean Martin's version here, the only real difference is that he chooses to introduce a modulation. In the final verse, he raises the song by one key. Gotcha. Right, but otherwise, it's really just a retread of the Crosby original. Right. And so Dean Martin's version, I think, is one of the first that starts this multi-decade trend to reference the nostalgia of White Christmas through the sound of 1940s.

music, rather than interpreting the inherently nostalgic chord progression, chromaticism, lyricism, artists will rely on the instrumentation and the exact form of the original. Interesting. So now the song holds more power almost as a recognizable cultural artifact rather than a plastic constantly changing surface to project new musical styles on. Like that's its value now is precisely its unchangeability. Exactly. I think its sameness is part of what makes it so successful, even though the original, as I suggest,

really does want interpretation. If we look at artists that have covered the song in the last couple of decades, it really sounds so close to the original. Some will pare it down and have maybe just acoustic guitar or piano, but really is in the style of the original song. We can look at Katie Perry. Ha, ha. Kelly Clarkson does the same thing.

She adds maybe a little bit of melodic embellishment, but it's just a simple piano song referencing the original. Rascal Flats covers the song. Maybe there's some country twang, but it's pretty much the original. Yeah, interesting. Where the tree tops glisten, and children listen. Wow, you really really. went deep with this one, Charles.

I went really deep. One of my favorites is Michael Bolton, who sings an epic high note, but really is just in the style of the original. Yeah. And one of the more recent covers of White Christmas by Michael Bublay and Shania Twain

is a sort of crossover cover of the Drifter's Duop version. I'm dreaming of white. with some of the Sinatra added. Gotcha. Okay.

There's one exception to this trend. Ooh. Who is this going to be? Pentatonics. Pentatonics. Our friends, they are inescapable right now. They're everywhere. They have done an acapella version of White Christmas,

which is incredibly jazzy, very complex, rich includes beatboxing. It blew me away. Man, we can just not, We cannot deny pentatonic. Ever since we did our acapella episode and talked about them, they have just been popping up again and again. All right, pentatonic.

We'll see what you got. But... But... I don't think it works. Oh. Damn. I really don't think that it works. Bring down the hammer, Charles.

They have taken this song so far. They're making White Christmas this sort of upbeat, jazzy, acapella track that I don't think is an appropriate interpret. of the piece. It's fast. They open with reference to the original material as sort of a slow, caroling-like song. But by halfway into the song, we have this upbeat, jazzy, fast-moving piece that may be a further extension of the sort of Sinatra, big band, big strings and horn sort of sound. White Christmas.

But it doesn't really fit the material. So it's lost some of that melancholy, which we would determine, was not. necessary for the song to really work. That's what I think. All right, fair enough. Charlie's naughty and nice list right here. I do love pentatonic. I think that they are a beautiful sound.

I love this cover. I just don't think that it's right for the material. Fair enough. Direct your angry letters to Charles Harding, Los Angeles, California. At the top of the episode, we asked what makes a Christmas song successful. We have this very scientific formula of nostalgia, coverability, a plethora of sleigh bells, and I think we've hit all of these marks,

but I'd like to suggest that there might be a fourth category. Ooh, cool. Just as the holidays are shrouded in the mystery and mythos of Santa Claus, I think a great holiday song has to have a secret mythology of its own. Ooh, okay, and we'll dig into that after the break, I imagine. Right after the break, exactly. All right, let's get some sleigh bells to play us out. here.

Thousands of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. when it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time.

The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Welcome back to Switchdon Pop on the top half of the episode. We looked into all the ways in which White Christmas. has become the most successful song of all time. We believe that it is embedded in the melody. It's embedded in the compositional structure of the song.

But I suggested that there is a secret myth about this piece. Yeah. And I'm going to hand it to you, Nate, because I understand that you've gone deep into this mystery. Yeah, that's absolutely right, Charles. White Christmas does indeed have a dirty little secret. What's that? We know it as the same thing.

song with the two stanzas only. Very, very simple, very straightforward. But in fact, its composer, Irving Berlin, originally wrote it with an opening verse that today is rarely, if ever, sung. I'll just recite them very quickly right now. The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway. There's never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A. But it's December the 24th, and I'm longing to be up north. Twist, Charlie. This dream of a white Christmas is essentially the dream of a successful Tin Fana Alley songwriter, like Irving Berlin, lounging poolside, presumably, in Beverly Hills underneath the swaying

Palm Franz and feeling a little nostalgic himself for his childhood, which took place in New York City. Right. So in a snowy place. Right. When he was comparatively of little means, the son of Jewish immigrants from what's now Belarus coming to America at the turn of the century, making ends meet as a song plugger on the streets of New York City and eventually working his way up to be one of,

if not the most successful songwriter of the 20th century. But this, so with this verse, this. This song has a very different kind of connotation. In a way, it's almost a little bit ironic or a little tongue in cheek, you know. I've made it here. I'm living the good life here in Beverly Hills, but I still yearn for the simple joys of a white Christmas. It's funny because it makes the song so much more personal at the songwriter's level, but much less universal for the listener.

Yes, I think that's true. And it also highlights a certain sort of nonsensical aspect of the lyrics here, which is if you are in a good, I don't know, half of the country or half of the world, you don't have to dream of a white Christmas. You are possibly having a white Christmas. Do you know what I mean? Like the lyric only truly makes sense in that universal way when it comes with the verse. Yeah.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm not, I don't disagree with you. you, but I think in some ways the universalism of the lyric is the idea of this kind of unblemished, perfect, pristine winter wonderland kind of Christmas. It's the idea of it. It's not the reality of it. It's the dream. Exactly. And that is something that becomes detachable.

And it's interesting. You know, there's a lot that's been written about this song, including an entire book just about white Christmas. Really? Yeah. And Irving Berlin himself is a very interesting figure in American songwriting because in some ways he's such an outsider. He's an immigrant, a Jewish kid from New York City who writes these songs, including White Christmas, Easter Parade, God Bless America, that become these American anthems.

Right. And a lot of people interpret these in a way as anthems of assimilation, anthems of the American melting pot in the American dream in some ways. Interesting. We don't need to spend too much time meditating on the irony that White Christmas and so many other Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters, including Let It Snow, Santa Claus is coming to town, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. I mean, it goes on and on and on.

In some ways, though, that's a beautiful metaphor for the American project and the possibility of this American experiment. You suggest that there's maybe another meeting about cultural assimilation and larger American values happening within this very simple Christmas tune. Yeah, I mean, well, so part of the reason it's so successful when it's released in 1942

is that it becomes associated with the war effort and it really serves as a song to bring the country together, to bring soldiers, at the front together and very much somehow, even though there's no mention of America in it, it seems to become this very sort of patriotic anthem in a way. Even though now it doesn't necessarily serve that function, I think it does, like we were talking about earlier, serve for us as kind of a piece of nostalgia wrapped in a piece of

nostalgia where it takes us back to this time when we did feel more united as a country and simultaneously it resonates with our own desire to be united with our families, friends, and loved ones during the holidays. I mean, this idea of dreaming of a white Christmas, and of course he says towards the end, you know, he's writing Christmas cards as well, speaks to the sense that half of the people who live in the American West weren't born there. So, you know, that's always been a region of pioneers and travelers. And then there's the sense around the holidays, like, what, you know, what am I missing? I'm missing my roots, my family, where it becomes very apparent how, in some cases, like, literally torn asunder we are from each other. And I think that's part of the reason, too, why this song resonates.

I can picture when the song was written, soldiers at war listening to White Christmas and the dream of the White Christmas being the dream of being home back with family. and I can also see so many images of this song being used in Hollywood over a montage of people traveling through airports trying to get home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not. I think that's exactly right. It continues to serve its function. Yeah, and again, this comes right back to, I think, what we began our discussion with, which is the interplay of hope and longing in this song and how kind of inseparable those are. and how in some ways the holidays can be the same kind of thing,

especially for those who are joining as a family and then leaving to go to their separate homes. You know, it's at once this beautiful, joyous occasion, but tinged with this sense of impermanence and certain lacrimose layer to it. I don't know. I'm getting a little emotional now, thinking about this, honestly.

But I think, yeah, I think it's part of why the song lands. I would even suggest that perhaps we are, at a turning point where this desire for a white Christmas full of snow might take on new meaning in an era where there is less snow because of global climate change. I think about when I was a little kid in Maine and there was snow all the time. Yeah. And now we really hope for snow. So I wonder if we might see new versions of this song that take on a sort of larger global environmental lens

an interpretation to the piece. Whoa, Chuck, you just rocked my world. That's deep, man. Yeah, absolutely. You can imagine in 50 years that line, dreaming of a white Christmas, having a much, much heavier connotation. Well, maybe Irving Berlin saw it so well,

sitting in California, having the mullingale and the hope all tied up together. This song is clearly not going anywhere. Yeah. I absolutely love it. I think we can probably end up. there and i just want to say nate happy holidays charlie may all your christmases be white and may all your

christmasers be white and by the way can i just say that's my favorite moment of the whole song why i just think it's a little joke he put in to this otherwise very serious song yeah just that little the word christmases is hysterical and it's never i can't think of a single other Christmas song that uses the plural of Christmas. You don't even say that in real life. It's such a funny word. And it's wonderful. It makes me smile every time I hear it. May all your Christmases. That's what I'm saying. It's the sage, Irving Berlin, seeing that this song is going to carry on Christmas over Christmas over Christmas and be replayed over. Yeah, absolutely. That could be like the new ecological salutation. May all your Christmases be white. Let's save the world. Amen. Amen. Happy holidays, Nate.

Wow, man, I feel like there's still so much more to say about this song. Now my brain is buzzing, which is great because I'm going to hear it about a million times in the coming week. So now I have a lot to think about as I do. All right. Beautiful, Nate. Let's keep on listening. Indeed. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding. And edited by our amazing editor, Bill Lance and myself, Nate Sloan. All of our design is done by the incredible Luke Harris.

We are a proud member of the Panoply Podcast Network, and you can find more. of our shows on any podcast player or at our website switched on pop.com. If you want to get in touch with us, we are on Facebook and on Twitter. We love to have conversations about music. So find us at Switched on Pop. We're going to be taking a little bit of a break for the holidays, and we'll be back in the new year. Until then, thanks for listening.