The Beach Boys Miscellaneous Christmas Tracks (1964 & 1977) Review

Ultimate Christmas’ funny album cover

As is common with albums, not every song is going to make the cut. The Beach Boys made two Christmas albums. The first, The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album, was released in 1964. The second, Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys, was never released. Some of its tracks, the first album, and some other Christmas works were released in 1998 on the Ultimate Christmas compilation album. With one exception, all of these tracks were cut during the Merry Christmas sessions and most were likely intended for the album. They didn’t make the cut and turns out the album didn’t either. It made Ultimate Christmas, so they can now be enjoyed.

“Santa’s Got an Airplane”

This is another silly song. Merry Christmas featured some, but I guess there was a limit. We once more cover an absurd premise of Santa Claus needing to get a better ride. The whole group sings on the track and very well… except for Mike Love, but it’s easy to ignore him. It’s a shame, because everyone else has energy and spirit in their voices, but Mike drops the ball. It’s almost like they really want you to know that Santa’s got an airplane. They sing lines like “Fly Away!” in a spirited and warm way. It helps paint the picture of the story. Their voices are raised, as is Santa, because he’s in the sky. The instruments serve a very small role in the song, but they’re not really needed. This song works well carried by its vocals. Perhaps the easy to miss instruments are easy to miss as they were recorded in 1969. Why not rerecord them so they match the ‘77 vocals better?

“(I Saw Santa) Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”

The instruments and lead vocals work well. Al Jardine does a good job of expressing the song with his singing. This is imaginably due to him co-writing the piece. The lyrics aren’t great by any means, but they are written in a way where they can be sung well. The song’s interrupted by spoken word from Al’s kids, Matt and Adam Jardine. They do kill the pacing, but the use of them provides a little more Christmas spirit.

“Melekalikimaka” (aka “Kona Christmas”)

I was banging my head on my hand for part of this one. It’s the sum of the faults of the band at this point. How am I going to spend Christmas? By surfing of course! and in Hawaii. It’s stupid, but not in a fun way. This song’s almost depressing. Since the 60’s, the group has tried to hold onto relevance in the culture. One way this is done is by doing throwbacks to old songs that were successful, like their surfing songs. You can tell there’s no passion or care here. This is a bunch of pandering garbage, once again sung by uninterested Mike and it’s not worth anyone’s time.

“Bells of Christmas”

This song is once again standard, alright vocals and instruments, but there’s an interesting aspect to the piece. Biblical references are frequently brought up. There’s many references to God throughout the Beach Boys’ discography. This song is one of the expressions of that. I was surprised that Brian Wilson didn’t write this one as he seems the most interested in this element of life. These first four songs have all featured Al in a writing and lead vocal role, though he usually shared with others. I wonder if he was interested in the subject of Christmas or perhaps there’s another reason. Some of these songs aren’t as bad as some that made it on the main track listing. On Merry Christmas, only two songs feature an Al writing credit. Why was he writing so many of these songs and then they weren’t featured? The group could’ve used some of this stuff. Al seems to care the most about this album of the lot, based on his songwriting and singing. Overall, no one seemed very interested in the Christmas project, so why even bother?

“Toy Drive Public Service Announcement”

Here’s some more actual creativity. In this short ditty, the band is telling people that some kids don’t have toys due to a lack of money, so bring your’s to “Crystal Ship”. However, they aren’t saying it… they’re singing it. Someone might listen to this on the radio, think it’s a normal song, and perhaps get inspired to help. The Beach Boys do well when taking a little concept and playing with it. One problem that may be the fault of the recording I heard is that some of the lyrics were difficult to make out. A big criticism for many of their Christmas songs is that there’s little about them to differentiate them from any other Christmas song. Here, their charm is making this their own… and it’s just a little PSA.

“Dennis Wilson Christmas Message”

This piece is similar to “Auld Lang Syne” from Christmas Album. The whole gang’s singing, only for that to shift into background noise so Dennis Wilson can do spoken word. He’s telling us to donate toys so kids can get them. A.) We already did this last song and B.) Dennis’ voice is so creepy. Due to all the drug and alcohol abuse, his voice is raspy and dry. In “Auld Lang Syne”, his voice was much nicer to listen to. Maybe the group wanted to uphold that tradition. For the sake of the album, why not get Al or Brian to give this message as their voices are a lot softer and friendlier. Brian sounds like your nice grandpa. The background music wasn’t too bad, though it’s very hard to hear (by design) for most of the piece. I wouldn’t mind hearing it without the Dennis part.

“Brian Wilson Christmas Interview”

I was looking forward to the one non-70s track for this whole Christmas excursion. Hopefully, Brian would give some interesting insight. When I finally reached it, I was disappointed as it’s just Brian having a quite boring conversation about their 1964 Christmas album. This seems like standard promotional material that comes with albums and movies. However, near the end, Brian talked about The Four Freshman briefly. Despite how briefly he was on the topic, it was so nice hearing Brian give love and praise to a band he loves so much. He called them, “one of the greater vocal influences in the world”. This is a good way of contextualizing Brian and maybe this whole band. They wear their influences on their sleeves.

OVERVIEW

Christmas albums are hard to pull off in general, but The Beach Boys certainly didn’t do the concept justice in the 60s or the 70s. There are some good ideas, but they are unrealized and rushed typically. It makes for a difficult listening experience.

Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys (1977) Review

A fan-made cover for the album

There’s quite the story behind the seemingly unimpressive M.I.U. Album. Its origins stem from 1977 where band member Brian Wilson did what he knew best, lose his mind and write a bunch of weird songs. As is typical, the other band members didn’t get it and more importantly, their label didn’t get it and the project was scrapped. This project of his was called Adult/Child. The band then got to work on two albums, one a Christmas album called Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys and another, California Feeling. Both utilized Adult/Child to a minimal degree. Surely one of them will be accepted. Upon the completion of the albums, they were rejected by the label and over a bit of time, these three albums were modified and cut down to be more commercial… mostly without Carl and Dennis Wilson, both disliked this fourth endeavor for lacking artistic integrity. The ultimate product of all this work resulted in M.I.U. Album, which was accepted. Merry Christmas seemed worth discussing as it and Adult/Child were mostly recorded and written to be their own thing. California Feeling and M.I.U. Album are basically compilation albums with songs from various years and intentions.

Seeing as this album was never officially released, I’ve obtained these tracks from the 1998 compilation album, Ultimate Christmas. Any tracks not on it were obtained from bootleg releases or other official release if available. The songs were listened to in order of the track listing they were ordered in for release.

“Christmas Time Is Here Again”

Surprisingly, this piece isn’t bad. It’s very wordy and simplified, but it’s not done too badly. The singing and drumming were surprisingly good. I’m not a fan of stories that paint a metaphorical picture of everything being perfectly happy and clean. One interesting lyric refers to the singer being sixteen. This gives the impression of the band trying to reference the good ol’ days of being young. The Beach Boys would do more throwbacks as time progressed. They’ve seemed to dislike being in their thirties and lacking relevance with the current culture of ‘77.

“Child of Winter (Christmas Song)”

This track suffers from the singer lacking enthusiasm, it’s more like spoken word due to the limited vocal stylization. Mike Love’s singing here is at the same level throughout. He’s not really singing and that kills the song. This is one of his least impressive performances. The lyrics don’t help, which is just listing details about nothing. “Here’s details about Christmas and how I feel about it, what does this mean?” Nothing, really.

“Winter Symphony”

Not too shabby. It was immediately refreshing after hearing Child to be greeted with some good vocals and great keyboard playing, probably by Brian. The trend of just describing Christmas is continued, but after a false ending half way through, we jump into an instrumental that lasts until almost the end. The instrumental section is the best part of the song. Instrumentals can be the best way of describing something as it can give more nuance and depth than words can. However, this one doesn’t do that. The instrumental isn’t Christmasy. The instrumental sadly wasn’t rescued from this song and put on another, non-Christmas album where it belongs.

“Michael Row the Boat Ashore”

Mike Love sings again and much better than last time. Its slightly more complex lyrics than the earlier songs and once more good instrumentals are applaudable, but then it all devolved into a pretty repetitive and uninteresting piece. The chorus is sung over and over again. I almost wonder if Mike just said it once or twice and that was just repeated over and over.

“Seasons in the Sun”

Finally, a great song. This one is beautiful. It’s about someone remembering the good times with an old friend. The work is a little depressing as the singer says the relationship’s gone, but they don’t just say that. That message is communicated with lines like, “Like the seasons, have all gone”. This is the power of a good holiday song. There’s meaning that can be derived from the change in weather and social climate. People act differently in Winter and Summer, same with trees and animals. Several parallels are drawn. Lines like “the birds are singing in the sky” are paralleled by the excellent backing vocals. The light, spring time is mirrored with a lovely trumpet. That’s right, spring, no winter elements, including Christmas, are mentioned. It’s stated that old things they used to do, like beaches, wine, and singing, are gone now. All of this parallels happy and warm times. This song is saying that to varying degrees, we lose this feeling in the Winter, so this song isn’t even pro-winter time. Despite that, “Seasons in the Sun” is an intelligent and sophisticated piece that deserves to be heard by everyone due to its harmonies and thoughtful lyrics, among other qualities.

“Morning Christmas”

This one’s hard to grasp. The slow harmony that the whole song is sung as is a nice change of pace, but it isn’t reaching or grabbing the listener. The lyrics are once again bad, but there’s not much of them. Lyrics like, “Children love to play, Children laugh, Children love to sing” are positive and supportive of the winter time, but lines like, “Cold wind blowing” aren’t. The whole song is sung in a melancholy style. There’s once again an instrumental portion and while it is a highlight, it isn’t as good as the other one. This song is too all over the place to really be comprehended. It doesn’t help that the audio quality is quite poor. I needed to look at the lyrics while listening so I could understand what was being said.

“Alone on Christmas Day”

“Child of Winter” has great vocals in comparison to this. I got tired listening to how bored Mike obviously was. I can just imagine him reading the lyrics with no life in him. The lyrics are okay. Real singing could propel them way more. The line “Alone on Christmas Day” recurs throughout the song, only to be subverted at the end with, “In reality you’ll never be Alone on Christmas Day.” That’s a highlight. This song also has a brief instrumental portion, but it’s unimpressive just like the instruments for this whole song. Those musicians sound bored as well.

“Go and Get That Girl”

The vocals are admirable here. There’s some effort in describing the story. While the singers seem somewhat disinterested, it’s still more than Mike was. The instruments are the most impressive part of the piece, with trumpets once again emphasizing the goings on. This girl wants you, go get her! This one’s one of the better songs featured, but it doesn’t try much and doesn’t achieve much. This also has nothing to do with Christmas or winter.

“Santa’s On His Way”

This one’s pretty amusing. It starts pretty typically, moderately interested singer sings of Christmas happenings with more interesting instrumentals. The keyboard is once again king. Here, the song’s about Santa and his sled. He’s actually got a new sled. This sled’s a 747 with a “super-speed” clutch. This sled also has cargo doors and can defy physics. The sled’s also used outside of Christmas for local runs and Mrs. Claus has joy rides on the weekends. The sled is taken to car shows and drag races. I am without words for how dumb this song is. I guess it’s a throwback to their earlier car songs, but I’m filled with questions. Why relate it to Santa? Why have the first half of the song unrelated to the sled’s specs? Why do more car songs? This tune is pretty fun and easy to listen to and like. This song does damage to the integrity of an album trying to be serious, but seeing as the album is failing to do much of note, this is a little Christmas treat.

“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”

This piece is sung pretty straightforward by a group of children with the Beach Boys doing backing vocals. The two different types of voices, child and adult, don’t compliment each other. The kids also aren’t very good singers. However, those aren’t the main problems. This song doesn’t try anything new. The instruments and the singers sing this basically like how anyone else has over the years. Think of Beach Boy songs like “Sloop John B”, which brilliantly reinvent old tunes. The band may as well have just not participated in this recording and just pulled one of the million stock recordings around. It’d sound the same.

“Xmas Carol Medley”

I was glad to see a medley was thrown in this mix, only to be disappointed by more child singers. I think they’re the same ones that did the last one. However, here they’re sharing lead with the Beach Boys. The singing is decent. The instruments are decent. I’m a big fan of reinventing old songs with creative techniques, such as medleys. The songs are woven together well and it’s a fair tune to listen to. One highlight is the very wholesome ending line, “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”. It’s a peaceful and relaxing way to end the album and by extension, the year. One change that would’ve helped the piece would be to lose the kids and have the Beach Boys be the only singers. They are better singers and can carry the piece further. Overall, this one isn’t good, but it’s not bad either.

OVERVIEW

Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys is unimpressive. Every right it does is contrasted by two wrongs. Instead of slogging through these eleven tracks, just listen to “Seasons in the Sun” eleven times. Maybe toss in “Santa’s On His Way” or another “fun” one. I’ve wondered why the Beach Boys did another Christmas album. I suspect that their lack of commercial appeal and their fragmenting as a band may have given them a need to have a little more positivity tossed in their life and discography

or maybe they thought it’d make money.