It’s depressing to think that the last decent Christmas single was released 30 years ago – ‘Stay’ by East 17, which arrived three weeks after the best Christmas single ever – Mariah’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’. I must confess to a soft spot for 2003’s ‘Don’t Let the Bells End’ by The Darkness, but a schoolboy pun isn’t really enough to carry a Christmas song. ‘Christmas Log’, for example, could in theory be a scatological festive classic, but let’s be honest, it would probably be s**t like so many Christmas songs curled out over the past three decades.
So, with that in our horrendously judgemental minds, thank goodness that ‘It’s Christmas’ from Pershore-based singer-songwriter Lennox is a cracker to add to the Christmas canon. It’s a thigh-slapping stomp with copious chiming bells and jolly lyrics such as ‘Watch the children having fun / Remember the days when we were young.’ It’s like Shakin’ Stevens singing ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ by Scissor Sisters, but with a Feeder-blurred-into-McCartney bridge. Now, how many other songs merit that description?
Christmas is a time of many traditions, one of which is tediously referring to Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everyone’ as ‘Noddy Holder’s pension’. But the facts don’t lie: the Black Country singer receives hundreds of thousands of pounds each year in royalties from a song released on the same day in 1973 as Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’. Likewise, the latter song earns Birmingham’s Roy Wood enough to buy a small terraced house every year.
So, there you have it: Lennox completes a holy trinity of actually good Christmas songs made in the Midlands. Next time you’re in Asda and losing the will to live as you search for an ‘essential’ item that even the dog will refuse to look at, you could be listening to ‘It’s Christmas’ and you won’t want to smash a thing.
‘It’s Christmas’ is out now on Bandcamp and Spotify. Find out more about Lennox on their Linktree.
By: Neil Laurenson