God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Today’s carol is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and the competition was much stiffer than last time. Several big names, including Ella Fitzgerald and Simon & Garfunkel had to be cut from my short list in an attempt to get it down to five. I didn’t succeed. Here are my top six. They’re not ranked, they’re just in an order that I think would be fun for listening to.

Barenaked Ladies with Sarah McLaughlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGVNzgUxE-g&list=RDHGVNzgUxE-g

Gotta have some Canadian content. This is, strictly speaking, a God Rest Ye/We Three Kings mash-up, but the transition is well done and it works. BNL keep it hopping, bringing a light touch to the carol, while McLaughlin adds a bit of gravitas.

Simply Three

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RhUcNSAYbc

Heavy strings. Possibly one of my favourite genres of music. This rendition is beautiful, a little sinister, driving and exciting, evokative of fearful hosts of seraphim crying out from the skies over Bethlehem. Not nice, dove-faced pre-Raphaelite seraphim. Seraphim that just emerged from an anime battlefield, and are here to pronounce doom on death, Satan and the hordes of Hell.

Jethro Tull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3JMcW1D69g

Either you like Jethro Tull, or it’s time to give them another chance. This one kind of suggests that you’ve just stumbled onto the really cool little side-avenue that nobody knows about off of Sesame Street, where all of the groovy Muppets merrily chill. Ain’t nobody dismayed around here, man. Oh, and that one weird dude with the anarchy tatoo makes a great cameo towards the end. But it’s cool.

Annie Lennox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsJD8RlhbI

If these were ranked, this would be number one. The video portrays Lennox as the Fairy Blackstick of Christmas, evoking a weird, English fantasia probably induced by listening to Christmas carols and eating very strong stilton before going to bed. And the music is just beautiful. Rich. Creepy. Definitive. The fourth verse gives me shivers every time.

Chick Corea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGP6PAlUTtg

Instrumental jazz. Lots of improv. This one is just fun.

Black Sabbath

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_rz69L_wZo

We’re all agreed that Dio was the best Black Sabbath front man, right? Nobody else could possibly articulate “comfort and joy” with this much edge. He puts the imperative back into the words “God rest ye,” and Tony Iommi delivers serious classic metal riffs to drive along the vocals. This is one to put on when you’ve just come back from the mall and you feel like you are going to garrotte something if you hear one more overwrought popstar mangling O Holy Night or cheesy “I miss you and it’s Christmas” anthem. But ignore the video, which just a bad compliation job.