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Blogocentric Formulations #835909 added December 11, 2014 at 3:27am
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The World's Smallest Turkey
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"Christmas Wrapping"
by The Waitresses
I love the story this song tells, of a busy woman who's decided not to make a big deal about the Christmas season. It's a little sappy, especially the part about missed connections with the guy all year before running into him on Christmas Eve, but part of the charm of some holiday songs - at least for me - is that they're a little cheesy and idealistic and just make you feel good. We can spend the other eleven months of the year criticizing a creative work's plausibility, realism, proper setup and payoff of narrative devices, etc. I think it's okay to have one month a year where you just enjoy a silly song because it has a feel-good story to it.
The Waitresses were a new wave band out of Akron, Ohio which was comprised mainly of guitarist/songwriter Chris Butler and singer Patty Donahue. They were only active from 1978 to 1984, but in that time they put out this song, as well as another minor hit with the song, "I Know What Boys Like." This holiday song wasn't actually something the band had ever planned on writing or performing; it was written at the request of their label ZE Records, which asked each of its artists to come up with a Christmas song for a compilation album they were putting together. Butler wrote it as a response to so many New Yorkers he noticed seemed to only be coping with the holiday rather than enjoying it. In a rush to get it out in time for the holidays (they started working on it in August of that year), Butler cobbled together some riffs and other bits and pieces of songs he'd been saving up over the years, and actually finished up the lyrics on the cab ride to the recording studio. The song title's pun on the word "rapping" and it's fast-paced delivery of the vocals was strongly influenced by the rise of the hip hop scene in the early 1980s.
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