Christmas has the market sewn up when it comes to holiday songs, but there are enough New Year's songs around to fill up a mixtape, if indeed people still fill out mixtapes.And just as we wish you a Merry Christmas and, by the way, a Happy New Year, tunes to mark the turn of the calendar often show up on the B-sides of Christmas singles. Some of these musical afterthoughts have merit, including the Irving Berlin composition that was the flip of the best-selling Christmas song of all time.
No matter how you're feeling when the calendar turns, there is a song for the occasion.
The 18th century Scottish toast to nostalgia written by Robert Burns never mentions the holiday, and yet has been tied to it tightly through the years. That was especially true in the US in the 20th century when it became the theme song for Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians - broadcasting's face of the calendar change from 1929 until Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve got into the act (Lombardo died in 1977).
The Orioles were the first group to make it a hit in 1949. It has since been performed by all manner of people from Ella Fitzgerald, Lou Rawls and Ramsey Lewis to The Carpenters, King Curtis and in 2012, The Head and the Heart.
After those two classics, it's really a grab bag of also-ran New Year's numbers, unknown gems and occasional ringers.
The one that stands out, of course, is U2's 1983 anthem from their second album War, "New Year's Day," which is sort of a vague drawing of battle lines mixed with a love song. It remains a bracing antidote to gooey nostalgia.
One of the older blues tunes about the holiday was Mary Harris' "Happy New Year Blues," in which she admits, "I'm still feeling the same old way" despite the calendar change to 1936. With influential bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw backing her on piano, she finally admits, "I'm changing my way of living, that's all I have to say."
Come 1953 Lightning Hopkins was jumpin' with "Happy New Year," the logical flipside to his single "Merry Christmas." "Don't think about Christmas," he sings in it, "cause Christmas just has left."
What makes a classic and what makes a forgotten holiday song? Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas" for Bing Crosby to sing in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, but he also wrote another song that Crosby performed in the film: "Let's Start the New Year Right." Issued as the B-side of the "White Christmas" single, it's a decent mid-tempo number that begins with a countdown: "Five minutes to midnight…"
Likewise, bluesman Charles Brown will forever be linked to his "Merry Christmas Baby" but not so much for his 1961 follow-up, "Bringing in a Brand New Year."
When Spike Jones & His City Slickers had a hit in 1948 with "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth," they put another novelty song, "Happy New Year," on the flipside. The lively recording features all three of Jones' comedy voices: Earl Bennett (as Sir Frederick Gas), George Rock and Doodles Weaver. The party, with complicated clanking bells and sound effects, was all recorded live in one take, according to Dr. Demento, who anthologized it for his Holidays in Dementia.
That 1995 collection closed with Los Angeles parodist Scary Gary Alan's "New Year's Resolutions," with the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" that incorporates some rapped gags.
The Heartbeats, whose "A Thousand Miles Away" was stolen for "Daddy's Home" by Shep & the Limelights, has some of the same vibe in 1957's "After New Year's Eve," a single that asks, "Did you have a ball on New Year's Eve?"
In 1967, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas pledged to "finish what we started" on "New Year's Resolution," which kicked off side two to their King & Queen collaboration that also included "Tramp" and "Knock on Wood."
The Eagles concocted "Funky New Year" for the B-side to their 1978 holiday single, a cover of "Please Come Home for Christmas." A slinky Henley/Frey composition about a raging hangover, it's a song that deserved better than B-side banishment, and the Eagles revived it as an encore for some shows they played near the end of 1999.
Likewise "New Year's Eve Party" was the flipside to George Thorogood's more enduring 1983 single "Rock and Roll Christmas"
The Bottle Rockets titled their 1999 album Brand New Year and had two versions of the title song on it – metalloid and mandolin-backed - both with the same lament: "Brand new year, same old troubles."
Judy Garland, for her well-regarded 1957 album Alone, recorded the ultimate song about being dateless on New Year's Eve. And yet, in the ironically-titled "Happy New Year" she seems to give an inadvertent shout out to a future audience when she notes, "The gay ones don their silly paper hats and blow their stupid little horns."
A number of songs thought to be about the New Year, though, are really not. And I'm not just talking about Europe's ever-recurring "The Final Countdown."
In the rap field, Snoop Dogg's "New Years Eve," for example, uses the day as merely a metaphor for a fine lady. "Every time I see you shine it's like the lights at midnight on New Year's Eve," collaborator Marty James sings.
Van Morrison's "Celtic New Year," from his 2005 Magic Time album may qualify as a perfect holiday song until you realize that the Celtic New Year actually falls on November 1st.
Great Lake Swimmers' 2011 track "Gonna Make It Through This Year" is not specific about the date either. Singer Tony Dekker could be talking about the fiscal year except for the six feet of snow.
Foo Fighters' "Next Year," the final single from their 2000 album There is Nothing Left to Lose, talks about vague plans for homecoming in a single chorus lyric: "I'll be coming home next year." No promise that it's January 1st (indeed, the song was vague enough to serve as theme song to the TV show Ed for one season).
Death Cab for Cutie's "The New Year," which kicks off their 2003 album Transatlanticism, shows some disillusion with the moment after midnight strikes. "I don't feel any different," Ben Gibbard sings.
Former Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson wrote a strong anthem for the holiday with his "What a Year for a New Year," widely heard on the swell 2002 multiple-artist holiday collection Maybe This Christmas.
And Regina Spektor also revived a nice holiday tune in 2007 with the seemingly overly polite "My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)," a song co-written by Peggy Lee and Paul Horner for her failed 1983 Broadway show Peg. Lee's original recording (minus the sirens and gunfire sound effects) can be found on the 2006 compilation Christmas with Peggy Lee.
Azure Ray's 2002 "The New Year," from their Burn and Shiver album has them singing in high notes about the promise of the new year to a tinkly electronic backing.
In Tori Amos' "Our New Year," capping her 2009 holiday collection Midwinter Graces album, the protagonist keeps thinking she is seeing a loved one at a party, though she is wrong. Some assumed it was inspired by the death of her brother in a car accident in 2005, but she's said she'd rather keep the subject of the song private.
There are a few New Year's Eve songs that never mention those words.
Pink's "Raise Your Glass" may be associated with the last day of the year because it was used in the movie New Year's Eve, and of course involves toasting and drinking (the soundtrack to that movie did include a song called "New Year" by Kate York).
The Breeders 1983 "New Year," from their hit album Last Splash, is unlikely to make it to party mixes. In it, Kim Deal sings, "I am the new year" just as she sings "I am the rain" and "I am the sun." A new video of it, "New Year XX" heralded their 2013 tour marking the 20th anniversary of Last Splash.
One nice addition to the end of year set of songs was Tom Waits' "New Year's Eve," which closes his 2011 collection Bad as Me. In it, he describes the end of a raucous evening just before someone dashes it all and moves to Vegas. And just as he had used the melody to open "A Sight for Sore Eyes" in 1977, this one also ends with the old words of Robert Burns: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind..."
~December 26, 2013
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