The Beach Boys' Christmas Album

Bruce Beatlefan (April 26, 2008)

The Beach Boys' Christmas Album worked well as a lightweight, good-natured offering of original and traditional Christmas songs, and it also worked well in meeting the increasingly insatiable demands of Capitol Records (this album is the Beach Boys' fourth for the year 1964!).

The album comes in two parts, beginning with five original Brian Wilson songs ("Little Saint Nick" was actually a 1963 Christmas single which was used to lead off this album) which deal with some quasi-yuletide subjects like breaking up with your girl and a young boy's discovery that the store Santa is not the actual Santa Claus of the North Pole. These songs, all written by Brian Wilson, are fun but clearly indicate a dashed-off level of work, performed by the Beach Boys themselves without any sessionist help, and boasts the first lead vocal from Alan Jardine in the song "Christmas Day".

The remainder of the album features the full complement of session musicians which spice up such traditional Christmas fare as "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", "We Three Kings", and "Blue Christmas". These are impeccably performed, with a particularly superb version (perhaps the best ever) of "Frosty the Snowman".

Not an album to purchase if you're a student tracking the progress of Brian Wilson's increasingly ambitious songwriting career, nor the place to look for classic Beach Boys hits, but the Christmas Album has been a treasured album of its sort for over forty years, and deservedly so. It is a taseteful and fun Christmas offering