See I sing, and I grew up singing choral music, so theres a LOT of hymns, and choral stuff that I love; but are pretty obscure. Also I jsut love singing chirstmas songs (both carols and pop tunes). It's sometimes hard to separate the songs I love to sing, from the songs I jsut plove to here (or both).
Honestly 20 isn't enough, but I figured it'd make a good CD, so that's what I included. Also I don't want to sort the songs by order of favorites, because it really depends.
I've included an artist reference for my favorite versions:
Most Wonderful Time of the Year | Andy Williams |
Silent Night | Bing Crosby |
The First Noel | Bing Crosby |
White Christmas | Bing Crosby |
Little Drummer Boy | Bing Crosby and David Bowie |
Let it Snow | Burl Ives |
Baby it’s cold outside | Dean Martin |
Adeste Fideles | Luciano Pavarotti |
Hark the Herald | Nat King Cole |
Have yourself a merry little Christmas | Nat King Cole |
Oh Holy Night | Nat King Cole |
Oh little town of Bethlehem | Nat King Cole |
Oh Tannenbaum | Nat King Cole |
The Christmas Song | Nat King Cole |
I’ll be home for Christmas | Perry Como |
Silver Bells | Perry Como |
Pretty Paper | Randy Travis |
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen | Roger Whittaker |
Carol of the Bells | Trans Siberian Orchestra with Choir |
Joy to the world | Various (I like a bunch of different versions, some solo, some choir) |
Oh and my ten favorite christmas music artists in not a very particular order:
Nat King Cole (the best voice for the softer songs)
Burl Ives
Bing Crosby
Dean Martin
Andy Williams
Perry Como
Luciano Pavarotti (no-one does the projecting songs better)
Elvis
Randy Travis
Roger Whittaker (great christmas music, hate his other stuff)
Instrumentally I dig Vince Guaraldi, Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and the old Arthur Feidler stuff with the Boston Pops (though John Williams did the christmas concerts 100 times better, I just never hear those recordings. I went to them a lot as a kid growing up in Boston).
And no, I don't have any women on my favorite chirstmas singer list. The songs I like, I just prefer the male voices on; again probably because I'm a singer myself.
Let's make it a meme; pass it on.