Paul Williams
Wrapping Top Holiday Songs with Paul Williams
Mike Ragogna: President of ASCAP Paul Williams! Christmas songs! Go!
Paul Williams: Let me get myself in the mood. [sings:] “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." There it is! It's amazing how quickly you can connect to the emotion and the spirit of the season with this song. What amazes me is that you cannot find a business that has changed more and changes again and again and again than the music business through the years. Eleven months out of the year, the music business keeps changing, from the fifties rock 'n' roll through the seventies singer-songwriters into disco into rap, but you hit the twelfth month of the year and thirty of the top fifty songs were written in the fifties and forties. It's just amazing that these songs have the ability to endure. What a great annuity for the songwriters, but also what a great comfort to the people, because they love to hear them, obviously.
MR: And some of them have such great stories. I love how "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" almost didn't end up as the version we got because the lyricist didn't want to change the words.
PW: [laughs] Yeah.
MR: In addition to the director, apparently, Judy Garland got a hold of the lyricist.
PW: She had a history of doing that. And there was another song where she was an even more important influence. Nine days before the release of The Wizard Of Oz, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” was not in the picture. They didn't think the kids would sit still for it so it was not in the final cut. Judy Garland and her management and everybody just begged Louis B. Mayer, I think, to put it back in the picture and you wound up with the number one motion picture song in the history of songs for movies.
MR: And The Wizard Of Oz is like an unofficial holiday movie.
PW: It was on last night! [note: interview occurred on 12/13] Another interesting thing: My wife had never seen It's A Wonderful Life, so we watched it about four days ago. It was spectacular because Mariana is not as old as I am but she's age appropriate for me, and while she's watching It's A Wonderful Life for the first time, I'm watching it for probably the fortieth time. At the exact same places, we're crying; at the exact same places, we're laughing out loud. It is the most spectacular thing that there is some specificity about the emotions around the Christmas arts that unifies people. Not to preach, but I think that part of it is at the very basis of Maslow's needs— the desire for safety—and I think with all the changes in the world right now, there's a lot of anxiety. I think even for the artists recording these songs, they choose to record them because on some level—maybe even unconsciously—there is a real security in pulling those songs out and relating to the beautiful memories of being a kid at home and getting up on Christmas morning.
MR: It seems there's something spectacular about what humankind does during this period— that “Spirit of Christmas.” It doesn't matter what your religion is or what your feelings are about the holiday itself.
PW: On some level, we're exposed to the elegance of kindness. As we evolve through decade after decade, perhaps we become more and more cynical. This is a pause in that guarded, taking-care-of-business feeling where we take a second to look at ideals that are so sweet and so corny. But the fact is that they're all related to kindness. You see the ending of a movie like It's A Wonderful Life where the townspeople all show up for George Bailey and they're all throwing money at him to get him out of the mess that he's in. It's the pure elegance of kindness and I think it's probably an important thing to write about at any time.
It is a very exclusive club to have written a song that becomes a Christmas perennial. First of all, as an actor, I carry my own pointed ears with me because I've done The Night They Saved Christmas, and the last thing I did for The Muppets was the story and the songs for a special called Letters To Santa. They asked me to act in it and what did I get to play? Of course…one of Santa's elves.
MR: That’s right, as a songwriter, you’ve been involved with a few Christmas projects.
PW: I’ve written a lot of Christmas projects, The Muppet Christmas Carol being one of them, Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas…
MR: Classics!
PW: Well, even though they’re projects that come back again and again and show up every year on television, I've never had one of those songs break out as a Christmas perennial. I'm going to keep trying until the very end.
MR: It’s kind of odd, huh. Although, looking at ASCAP’s thirty biggest Christmas songs, I’m surprised that The Carpenter's "Merry Christmas Darling" didn't make this list.
PW: I am, too! It's absolutely one of my favorite Christmas songs, and again, there's something about her voice that is the perfect voice to deliver those emotions; there’s something so comforting about the sound of her voice. That's a great song. That's classic Christmas music.
MR: I have a theory, tell me how far off I am: When you look at ASCAP’s list, with the exception of Paul McCartney’s "Wonderful Christmastime" and Wham!’s ”Last Christmas," you have multiple versions of every song. Songs on the list are recorded by hundreds of artists and played endlessly around the holidays. But with “Merry Christmas, Darling,” it's almost intimidating for an artist to try to tackle that recording because she did such an untouchable version.
PW: Exactly! I've never thought of that, but it is so totally custom-suited for her voice that that recording is always going to be the recording.
MR: As far as the ASCAP list, it’s surprising that many of these songs were recorded by artists that you’d never expect.
PW: It’s amazing that the hippest and edgiest artists will continue to record these songs. I don't think you can have anything better happen to a copyright than to have Bruce Springsteen come along and sing "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," and you've guaranteed the next fifty years of people jumping on that song. For these guys who wrote these songs and for all of us who write songs, for the one song that sticks, you may write hundreds that don't. You may have dozens of songs that are recorded as album filler that never really take off. But to find something that is not only a hit once but also shows up year after year after year is a gift to the life of a songwriter. That's what ASCAP, which is a performer's rights association, is all about: making sure songwriters can make a living. Songwriting's a labor of love but it's a labor and we deserve to be properly compensated. Not only is it a gift to the songwriter but it's a wonderful gift to the public.
MR: Paul, you brought up the number one song here—Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" — which has been the most-played song for the last 50 years. It’s interesting how when that song is recorded now, we have a new tradition of singing it the way Bruce did, not the way it was done for decades before.
PW: [laughs] True!
MR: So what is your favorite song on this list?
PW: I have to tell you that out of all of them, Mel Tormé singing "The Christmas Song" is my favorite, and the side-by-side would have to be "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." There's something that makes me wish I sang more like Perry Como when I hear that song. I never sang like Perry Como, and that's sad but true.
MR: [laughs] Let me ask you about “Wonderful Christmastime.” People are so snarky about it. It's like, "Come on, Grinch! It's a Christmas song!”
PW: Exactly! If you're going to be snarky about something, there's always Ishtar.
MR: One of my favorite movies of all time but let’s move on. [laughs] I always ask you what advice do you have for new artists, but let's make it specific. What advice do you have for songwriters looking to create a great Christmas song?
PW: I actually tried to make a list of what feels like Christmas. One of the songs in The Muppet Christmas Carol goes, "It's in the singing of a street corner choir, it's going home and getting warm by the fire, in all the places we find love it feels like Christmas. It's in the giving of a gift to another, a pair of mittens that were made by your mother.” I sat down and I wrote that and even that never became a perennial. I'm the worst person in the world to tell them what to put in their songs. But I will tell them this: whether you're writing a love song for Valentine's Day or if you're writing a protest song about the State of the Union, if you're writing a Christmas song…be authentic. If you write from the center of your chest, if you write something that you feel instead of just think, there's a pretty good chance that somebody listening to that song is going to be touched by your openness and by the feelings that you're willing to share.
MR: That's really beautiful. Oh, before we go, just wanted to point out one of the songs on this list—“Baby It's Cold Outside" seems to be another Christmas standard with iffy lyrics.
PW: It is! But I think it's a seasonal song as opposed to a Christmas song. Usually, you hear it in that slow ballad style, it's not mainstream but it sure has hung in there.
MR: Paul, when you're sitting at a piano with your family around you, what Christmas classics do you play?
PW: "Silver Bells," "White Christmas,” and the songs that you hear again and again; the classic ASCAP Christmas songbook. My family has a really solid love affair going with The Muppets. They feel like family Christmas for me, so the most recent thing that I wrote and one of my favorite songs is, "I Wish I Could Be Santa Claus." If I sit down, that's one the guys want to hear from me. It's the spirit of Christmas. "I wish I could be Santa Claus for just one day, I'd fill a bag with kindness and I'd give it all away. I'd make the world a better place, I do it if I could. I love the way it feels inside when I do something good." I think that's the heart of the Christmas spirit. I love the way it feels inside when I do something good. If there's anything that I've ever written in my life that feels like the message I'm happy to share, that would be the one.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne
ASCAP TOP HOLIDAY SONGS CHART
1. "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" Written by Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, 1934
2. "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" Written by Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin, 1943
3. "Winter Wonderland" Written by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith, 1934
4. “Let It Snow! Let it Snow!” Written by Sammy Chan and Jule Styne, 1945
5. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting…)" Written by Mel Torme and Robert Wells, 1946
6. "Jingle Bell Rock" Written by Joseph Carleton Beal and James Ross Boothe, 1957
7. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" Written by Edward Pola and George Wyle 1963
8. "Sleigh Ride" Written by Leroy Anderson and Mitchell Parish, 1950
9. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" Written by Johnny Marks
10. "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" Written by Meredith Wilson, 1951
11. "White Christmas" Written by Irving Berlin, 1940
12. “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” Written by Johnny Marks, 1962
13. “Carol of the Bells” Written by Mykola Leontovych and Peter Wilhousky, 1936
14. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” Written by Johnny Marks, 1958
15. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” Walter Afanasieff and Mariah Carey
16. “Frosty the Snowman” Written by Steve Nelson and Walter E. Rollins, 1950
17. “Blue Christmas” Written by Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson, 1948
18. “Home for the Holidays” Written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman, 1954
19. “Little Drummer Boy” Written by Katherine Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone, 1958
20. “Do You Hear What I Hear” Written by Gloria Shayne Baker and Noël Regney, 1962
21. “Silver Bells” Written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, 1950
22. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” Written by Frank Loesser, 1948
23. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” Written by Tommy Connor, 1952
24. “Feliz Navidad” Written by Jose Feliciano, 1970
25. “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)” Written by Robert Kinkel, Paul O'Neill and John Oliva
26. “Last Christmas” Written by George Michael
27. “Here Comes Santa Claus” Written by Gene Autry and Oakley Haldeman, 1947
28. “Santa Baby” Written by Joan Javits, Philip Springer and Tony Springer, 1953
29. “Happy Holiday (From Holiday Inn)” Written by Irving Berlin, 1948
30. “Wonderful Christmastime” Written by Paul McCartney
Note: The list above represents an aggregation of performances of all different artist versions of each cited holiday song, across all forms of media, from 1/1/15 through 12/31/15.
BETH HART/JEFF BECK’S “TELL HER YOU BELONG TO ME” EXCLUSIVE
Beth Hart
According to Beth Hart...
"Writing this song was both very difficult and painful, as it is about my father leaving us for another woman, when I was very very young. But it was also totally liberating and healing, in my being able to get my truth out, and not having anything but love instead of what I thought was rage. It is by far one of my most grateful experiences in writing. When Jeff Beck brought that brilliant solo, I felt like it was a piece of heaven.”
“Tell Her You Belong To Me” will be featured on on Beth Hart’s upcoming album Fire on the Floor, which will be released Feb 3.
CURTIS STIGERS’ “SUMMER WIND” EXCLUSIVE
Curtis Stigers
According to Curtis Stigers...
“’Summer Wind’ is one of the sexiest Sinatra songs, and one of my favorites of his recordings. It’s not explicitly sexual but there’s something in the feel of the recording, something in the swing of the thing, that makes it sexy for me. The words, by the great Johnny Mercer—who was perhaps Sinatra’s favorite lyricist—speak of a sweet summer romance in the sun, afternoon walks holding hands on the beach, the soft warm breeze in her hair. You’ll have to forgive me for also imagining/remembering those long warm summer nights. After all, the seaside is an even more romantic place after the sun has set and everyone else has gone home. Ultimately, it’s a sad, lonely ending for our hero as that rascal Summer Wind doth taketh away as he once didst giveth, but we’ll forever have the memory of that sexy, sultry summer when we were younger and things were oh so much simpler.”
So here’s a little “Summer Wind” to keep you warm during the holidays...