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 Entertainment | December 2005 
Up on the Chart Top: A Seasonal Music Avalanche
 J. Freedom du Lac - Washington Post
| | Diana Krall's "Christmas Songs" is the most downloaded album on iTunes and one of the runaway hits of the season, reaching No. 17 on the Billboard chart. |
Nothing says Christmas quite like a summer day in Hollywood.
And so in July, at Capitol Studios, near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, the Canadian jazz chanteuse Diana Krall set about recording a holiday album.
Working in a studio made faux-festive by a prefab Christmas tree dragged out of somebody's attic, the icy-cool Krall, backed by the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, dashed off playful versions of various secular classics, including "Let It Snow," "Winter Wonderland," "The Christmas Song" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."
The session also included Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" - an indication that the heat and smog were getting to Krall. After all, "White Christmas" is the most recorded song of all time, with something like 2,000 versions in existence.
The world most certainly did not need another "White Christmas."
Like fruitcake jokes and re-gifting, pronouncements that holiday music has reached critical mass have become a seasonal tradition, and with good reason: There really is a glut. The trade magazine Billboard reported this month that more than 2,100 different holiday titles have already been purchased this year, more than double the number from a decade ago. That's a whole lot of little drummer boys. And girls: Krall's well-reviewed new album, "Christmas Songs," is her second seasonal release, following a now-out-of-print 1998 EP, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
"In the music industry, there's always too much and too many of everything," says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts. "That's certainly the case with Christmas music. There's a hunger for it each year, but that can easily be satisfied by grabbing any of the thousands of Christmas albums that already exist."
There is, however, still room each season for a new hit holiday album or two, which is why labels keep releasing them. (It doesn't hurt that holiday-music releases also help artists remain visible between regular studio projects.)
Last year, Clay Aiken was the seasonal sweepstakes winner, as his "Merry Christmas With Love" collection entered the Billboard chart at No. 4 and eventually sold 1.1 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
This year, Krall's "Christmas Songs" has avoided getting lost in the shuffle between the year's new holiday releases (of which there were, as always, dozens) and all those catalogue albums from the tinsel-time titans (Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Burl Ives, Gene Autry, the Singing Dogs, et al.).
"Christmas Songs" is, in fact, hotter than July, having sold 316,000 copies since its Nov. 1 release, including more than 91,000 in the week that ended Dec. 11, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The most-downloaded album on iTunes, "Christmas Songs" has busted into the Billboard Top 20 and sits this week at No. 17.
And the Grammy-winning singer-pianist's swinging, shoo-be-do-bopping take on "Jingle Bells" is the biggest breakout single on the all-holiday format that spreads, virus-like, across the radio landscape every November, when . . . hark! The herald angels sing. And sing. And sing.
This year, at least 282 U.S. radio stations are playing seasonal music and nothing but through the holy holiday, according to industry Web site 100000watts.com. Among them is Washington's WASH-FM (97.1). Krall's music isn't typically played on the adult-contemporary station. But when Program Director Bill Hess flipped formats the Friday before Thanksgiving, he embraced Krall's frisky version of "Jingle Bells." It's now played three or four times daily.
Krall isn't the only artist whose holiday album is selling in significant numbers this year. She's jingle-brawling for the seasonal title with Il Divo, a group of classical-pop pretty boys assembled by "American Idol's" resident Scrooge, Simon Cowell. Il Divo's "Christmas Collection" has sold 347,600 copies so far, including 77,000 in the week that ended Dec. 11.
Those two are the runaway hits of the holiday sales period, when seasonal albums account, on average, for about 9 percent of total sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan - no thanks to the kids, since adults tend to make most of the feel-good seasonal music purchases every year. The NPD Group, a market research firm, says that 72 percent of holiday CDs last year were bought by people over the age of 36. And 40 percent of all holiday music was picked up from mass merchandisers.
So, if you're a middle-age shopper, buying a Swiffer or something at Wal-Mart, you should pat yourself on the back if you somehow get out of there without a copy of "The Regis Philbin Christmas Album." And if you do buy one, don't despair (too much, anyway): You wouldn't be the first, as Philbin's album is doing decent business.
Several titles are selling briskly, in fact, including Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Lost Christmas Eve," Mannheim Steamroller's "Christmas Celebration," Kenny G's "Greatest Holiday Classics," the Vince Guaraldi Trio's "Charlie Brown Christmas" (yep, the old album that you listened to when you were, like, 6) - even Larry the Cable Guy's "A Very Larry Christmas" comedy set.
None of which surprises Billboard's Mayfield.
Though plenty of Christmas albums flop every year, they "always do significant numbers" as a category, "because they happen to have Christmas every year," Mayfield says. "How big the category goes depends on whether you have a blockbuster amping it up by getting a big audience, like Diana Krall and Il Divo are this year. People will buy something new if it connects."
"New" meaning a refreshed version of something old, of course. Because when it comes to the business of selling Christmas music (and we keep saying Christmas because Kwanzaa and Hanukkah albums rarely sell enough to crack Billboard's seasonal Top Holiday chart), truly new is about as viable as a nutcracker with lockjaw.
In fact, not since Mariah Carey's 1994 composition "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (written with Walter Afanasieff) has a new holiday hit entered the Christmas canon.
"The big secret about Christmas music is that the hits are the hits," says WASH-FM's Hess. "Although people like a variety, they really respond to hearing the familiar Christmas songs. We talk to the audience every year and do the research, and it's Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Jose Feliciano, Gene Autry, Burl Ives. It's hard to break through that. So we play the hits frequently. And we freshen things up with things like Diana Krall's 'Jingle Bells,' a fresh take on a very familiar song."
And here, you'll have to excuse Nate Herr if he begins humming "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Forever."
Herr is the senior vice president and general manager at Verve Music Group, and his label has a bona fide holiday hit on its hands: "Christmas Songs" could become "a perennial seller," Herr says, and at some point might even overtake 2001's "The Look of Love" as Krall's bestselling title.
"You're talking about a window of opportunity that's only five or six weeks, before the holidays are over," Herr says. But over the course of several holiday seasons, he adds, the holiday disc could beat the 1.5 million copies sold by "Look of Love."
No matter what sales mark it ultimately hits, "Christmas Songs," says Herr, has been a success in large part because of Krall's insistence on recording the very standards that are ubiquitous (the polite way of saying inescapable) between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"The repertoire has a lot to do with it," he says. "Diana has established herself as a trusted brand in the mainstream, but [most of] her fans haven't had the opportunity to hear her performing these classic songs. It doesn't get any better than some of the classic versions, like some of Bing Crosby's. But Diana remains fairly true to the originals; she's not doing dramatic reinterpretations or arrangements. And it's a fun record. Diana had fun making it, and she's having fun promoting it, too."
Easy for Herr to say: He's not the one flying back and forth across the country to hawk the product. Krall will have performed on five different TV shows by Christmas Day including "Live With Regis and Kelly" last week and again (taped) with Regis and Kelly when they host "The Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade" on Dec. 25.
Then again, Herr had to suffer some for Krall's art, too.
When he and his underlings first gathered to listen to "Christmas Songs," much dreaming of a white Christmas ensued, what with the summer swelter on full blast.
"Nothing like listening to holiday music when it's about 90 degrees in New York City," Herr says. But, he adds: "We should have decorated." |
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