![]() With bells dusting snow over a syrupy Motown groove, this highlight of Stevie Wonder’s 1967 holiday set Someday at Christmas became a deserved (and oft-covered) holiday radio classic. And by “holiday songs,” we’re sticking to songs that make specific references to Christmas, Hanukkah or other wintertime holy days - no songs about New Years’, no songs just about December, and no songs that just kinda sound festive. Song years were determined by whenever the most famous version of the song was first widely debuted, and covers were avoided in all but the most essential circumstances. To honor (and hopefully illuminate) this history, Billboard is going back through the last half-century of holiday music to choose the one song that reigns supreme in each year. The lineage of modern holiday music is full of such strange stockingfellows, adding up to a fascinating timeline that never coheres into an obvious narrative, but is full of enough twists and turns to make it an exhilarating sleigh ride. ![]() ![]() It seems impossible that Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin'” and Elmo and Patsy’s “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” all spawned from the same decade, let alone the same year, but sure enough, there they all are on the 1979 release calendar. ![]() That’s what makes it remarkable to go back and find out exactly when all these songs first entered the Christmas canon. ![]()
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