The Smiley Smile Message Board

Since it's that time of the year, how about a revisiting and re-evaluation of what I think is a terrific Christmas album, and one of the best BW solo albums. The harmonies are beautiful throughout, great background tracks with plenty of familiar Brian touches, Brian is in great voice throughout, great retro cover design which immediately reminded me of those old Firestone Christmas collection album covers that were around my house as a kid, a good mix of standards and originals, and it's just a nice album to put on in December. I didn't think it got the reception it deserved when it was released, and I wish some of the all-Christmas FM stations would pick up at least one of the tracks in their rotation.

It also boasts collaborations with both Jimmy Webb and Bernie Taupin. "Christmasey" is a personal favorite.

Check it out - I made it easy for everyone to listen...  :)

Great stuff, heartwarming music.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6aIIr6Bu2ZNrE9Jxd8mfoUJE_JQ2vWNg (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6aIIr6Bu2ZNrE9Jxd8mfoUJE_JQ2vWNg)

Over the last few years, I listen to this almost as much as the classic BB Christmas agree.

Its actually probably my second favorite BW solo album, as it has a certain loose, fun, festive sound. 

My go to songs are the title track, On Christmas Day, and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Brian's lead vocals are terrific on this one. He's in full voice, and singing with a lot of heart - I love the sound of his voice on this album. Listen to how he phrases some of the traditional carols, he's really going all-out.

Another highlight is Nicky Wonder's guitar work - fantastic rhythm and lead playing, and great tone. Great player.

What I like too is that the album could have gone as maybe some expected, where the "surf" elements get played up in the arrangements. There is some of that, but it wasn't done so it sounds gimmicky or anything. It's a nice blend.

And another BW trademark is that you have to listen to the whole song, or else you'll miss one of those trademark BW musical curveballs. It could be a vocal reharmonization, a twist in the chord progression, a key change, an unexpected instrument popping up in the mix, an unusual coda...it's all there. It's not like you can get what the track is about, like "Oh, this is The First Noel, right...", from hearing the first 15 seconds. You have to stay tuned for the whole thing.

I think the arrangement here is as great as that of That Lucky Old Sun. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is a good example. Pure classic.

Haven't listened to it in awhile, but I sure played it a lot for a couple years. What I Really Want for Christmas is one of Brian's best songs, ever. I was sad, though, when I saw a bunch of copies of the cd in a discount bin at Sam Goody when they closed their mall store. Does anyone know how well it sold?

If we believe the interviews from when this was released, and I have no reason not too, then this album was all Brian's idea.

He wanted to cut a christmas album, he went into the studio and did just that. This is a fully motivated Wilson. Arrangement-wise, it is the closest we're going to get to the classic BW sound.

It is the closest we're going to get to Brian just doing what he does, the old way,  with no interference. And it shows.

I agree. This album really should be a Christmas standard.

https://charlierose.com/videos/10231
Brian says Clive Davis called him up w/ the idea of doing an x-mas album.

Brianism "christmas. it makes me think of Jesus Christ. it should be pronounced Christ-mas" and then that funny cough a few secs later ughUH

It's a very good Christmas album. I think that even the BBs remakes - including Auld Lang Syne -  are good (in case of The Man With... beating the original production wise) but when listening to the album now I think they are out of place and kinda useless. The title track is a Christmas-Love&Mercy. Touching.
I could live without that uptempo part of "We wish you a merry Christmas".
And I'm very happy about the bonus tracks, especially Brian's beautiful "Joy to the world"

From first listen I loved the 'Joy To The World' tag on The Man With All The Toys. Very unexpected and it certainly felt like a personal BW touch.


Agreed! I think it's among the best of his work since '67. A true highlight. Which is why I think it was such a mistake not to include it on Playback.

I dig this album. His remake of "Little Saint Nick" is a little "shouty" as many have said in the past, but I can't not like it anyway.

The originals aren't the best stuff. I'd say "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is the strongest. I also dig the great high note/falsetto Brian does on "The First Noel." Also love the intro vocals on "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."

Great vocal arrangements as always.

Also worth mention is that they still have a page up on Brian's website that collects all the stray Xmas tracks including some not found on the XMas album (e.g. "The Christmas Song"):

http://www.brianwilson.com/christmas/

The album also resulted in one of the stranger TV appearances Brian has made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPQAo9Kfqpk

Confession...sometimes I actually prefer this to much of the 1964 Christmas album.  I know the 64 album is objectively better, but the original version of Many with all the Toys is so terrible IMHO it drags it down big time. Plus, and i know this is gonna be a WTF for many of you, but I actually don't like Brian's vocal on Blue Christmas at all.

While I prefer The Beach Boys album, it feels a little disjointed with the standards having a completely different feel while the whole BW album is a little more cohesive. 

So, the Man With All The Toys / Blue Christmas 45 isn't a favorite?  ;D Personally, my only problem with the original Man With All The Toys is the incredibly loudly mixed "oh"s. As in, the man "OH" with all "OH" the toys. It can be painful when listening with headphones. Brian's 2005 version was mixed much better.

Nope :lol  TMWATT to me just always sounded unfinished. And yeah the bvs are mixed too loud (and eerily reminiscent of the 1980 abomination known as School Days).

As for Blue Christmas, Brian's vocal is too sweet, for lack of a better word to use. It just doesn't sound right on this song IMHO. I think Dennis might have been a better fit.

"The Man With All the Toys" sounds pretty limp in stereo with the instrumental track mixed pretty low. It sounds punchier on the original mono mix, which I believe was used in the original circa 1990 Capitol CD.

Ehhhhh...it's okay at best.  The production is a bit too glossy and even if Brian's vocals have been sweetened a good bit, he still doesn't sound like a very good vocalist.  Some tracks are alright but overall this is standard fare. 

Title cut is the closest to smile style instrumentation Brian has got without going overboard into "pretender" territory

I’m also a big believer in this record. It was an odd post Smile move, but there’s a lot of inventiveness and creativity there, without too much paranoia about how it will be perceived. I do think it might be overlong by a couple of tracks, but otherwise it’s a winner. Love the revamped Man With All the Toys, title track and God Rest.

Two other notes:

I always find it charming how BW does ALL THE VERSES of the traditional carols. It’s like he’s working from an old hymnal or something. (As opposed to the Joe Thomas produced Joy to the World, where they apparently never looked up the second verse, which bugs me more than you might think.)

Second, Inalways imagine that BW imagined God Rest as a duet with Mike. The way it features those super low bits would work so well with a second vocalist ...

I always thought that song was more in line with Pet Sounds.  I hear some elements of IJWMFTT in it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuptvX3xYlg

The snippets from the making of "On Christmas Day" are a lot of fun to watch...

I was just going to write something about giving Brian's Christmas album a fresh listen this year and repeat again how it's usually due for a re-evaluation (or at least a re-listen) because it's so damned good as far as holiday albums go. Then it turns out I already did it here 6 years ago (and before that too) and what I wanted to say is already there! The only thing is the old playlist is defunct but this album is fairly easy to access and listen on any of the usual streams and to purchase a hard copy too.

I still think it's an almost criminally overlooked and underrated Christmas album with some great sounds and performances, and it's worth a listen this year too among all the holiday music being spun. And as mentioned in the discussion above, some of the videos surrounding the release are definitely worth checking out too. Brian and band knocked this one out of the park, and why some of these tracks are not being spun on the 24/7 Christmas stations and streams more frequently is a mystery to me.

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Jclbv-d9L._SX425_.jpg)
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81GnhYWERqL._SX425_.jpg)

Yes, it is a great album imo. The first album Brian released after Smile and you can immediately hear that the burden was taken off of his shoulders by the way he sings (even better things where to come). It's interesting to note that - apart from his own compositions - Brian sticks to traditional Christmas songs instead of Pop or Rock songs. It's probably the kind of music that was played in the Wilson's house during the season.
The bonus tracks are most welcome. "Joy to the World" is so beautiful. And although just a bonus track, it circles back to the new ending of "The Man with all the Toys".

I gotta say that "What I Really Want For Christmas" is just such a great Brian Wilson composition.  Just a remarkable tune. That's it.

Thank you for this post.  I listened to the album today while taking my dog on a nice long walk.  It was a very pleasant listen… my favorite was O Holy Night… I loved the harmonies.

It's a pretty decent Christmas album for the most part.  Although some of the songs here don't work particularly well with Brian's voice or the clunky faux-Pet Sounds production (I'm looking at you, "O Holy Night"), but what does work on here is pretty swell.  I like the new versions of "Little Saint Nick" (hard to mess that one up) and "The Man With All The Toys".  And the title track is quite pleasant.  Perhaps the best track on here though is one of the bonus tracks "On Christmas Day" which appears to be a re-rewrite of "Belles Of Paris".  Wish I could track down a vinyl copy of this one without having to pay a couple of hundreds for it. 

Wasn't this the album that got caught up in the Sony "rootkit" controversy?

While not a major deal when it came to Brian specifically, it slightly tainted a lot of releases from around that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

I don't recall any issues specifically with Brian's Christmas album in terms of the rootkit mess affecting sales of the album or anything similar. That's in terms of any media coverage saying if you put this specific Christmas album in your CD drive it will install a bunch of bloatware...I don't recall it even being on the radar as an issue within the fan groups online, but I could be wrong. More of an issue was the reaction of certain small and annoying pockets of fans and fan cliques who decided to bash the album online and even bash the clip (which I believe was posted as a RealMedia file, how's that for a blast from the past) which Brian posted of one of the songs, and that led to a lot of bad stuff. But that's sadly part and parcel of portions within this fan base.

I actually never had issues at all with the rootkit crap because I rarely played CDs on my PC at the time after trying to play a Michael Penn album on the PC and having it install all kinds of garbage and code under the guise of it being an "enhanced" CD-ROM that was set to autoplay and auto-load all kinds of files as soon as it booted up on the drive. And it was hard to get rid of all the various files which that CD embedded onto my PC.  After that, I always checked my CDs for such content labeled on the packaging or disc and simply wouldn't play those albums on a PC. Pretty easy fix but also not a good move from the labels who tried to tie all of that crap to consumers' discs when most had no clue what was going on or why their albums were installing random files and slowing down their PC's when they tried to listen or even convert the albums to play on portable devices.

It seems like a generation ago, but reading that old article also reminded me of when Apple pulled one of the dumbest corporate business moves when they loaded a U2 album onto users' devices without letting them know in advance, and without their permission, and it caused an uproar.

And just as a further comment on the possible reasons why we don't hear tracks from Brian's Christmas album in regular rotation on the various streams, streaming services, or online playlists: Not saying this is the case specifically with this album, but it may have to do with the way labels and label management of their song catalogs works and has been working. In short, it's not an honest business, not that it ever has been, but it's coming out as late as the present day in 2023 that labels and those corporate interests who run the vehicles for those labels' products can and do bury and under-report certain artists while promoting others. And it's basically a case of stacking the deck in favor of some while burying others, and the actual hard facts and numbers regarding sales and streams don't matter.

Just one example with streaming, reporting to chart services (like Billboard, etc), and all of that. What labels will do is a form of "bundling" to the major streaming services. That means they'll negotiate a deal where they'll offer a major, blue-chip artist who is guaranteed sales and click revenue if the services also take a deal on lesser or lower tier artists. So they will offer, say, Taylor Swift to a streaming network if that network also "buys" 20 lesser known artists from that label and its subsidiaries as a bundle. It's the same thing TV networks do with cable subscriptions, and now video streaming services where we have to subscribe and pay for 100 channels we don't watch and have no interest in, just to get the 2 or 3 top tier channels we do want to watch. It's why I dropped cable TV years ago to be honest.

So take that "bundling" practice, and consider that the label controls which artists get sent to the various online outlets and streaming services, and the success of those songs and artists is often a result of consumers letting their streams play at random for hours during the day instead of choosing specific songs to be played on their stream. If that label wants to promote a given artist, it's basically built into the system they have created so a person's stream might play 4 Taylor Swift songs every hour and those get tallied as individual plays rather than people actively requesting their device play a Taylor Swift song. And whatever other artists that label chooses to "bundle" into the deal will get popped onto those streams as well, whether consumers want to hear them or not. And artists who the label may have in their stable but may not be in favor as much as others can get buried by the same system, despite demand or popularity.

Then factor in that the estimate I've heard is approximately 100 to 200 streaming "clicks" or plays is equal to one actual purchase of a song on any of the sales sites like iTunes in terms of weight on the chart services. So if a label places a certain song and artist in the streaming bundle, and has however many millions of consumers playing a playlist during the day on their device and service of choice, the charts will tally those "plays" accordingly and sometimes artificially inflate those chart numbers for placement, whereas the real power financially is when consumers actually purchase the song versus having it on a random playlist where they listen to music.

Not saying this is anything new, but it may help explain why certain artists are not included on the yearly Christmas charts and playlists, while others somehow mysteriously appear everywhere.

And I love the song, always have, but isn't it odd that Brenda Lee scored a #1 "hit" in 2023 with her Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, recorded in 1958? The song has ALWAYS been in regular rotation, for decades! And then in 2023 it suddenly becomes a story repeated and replayed on most major media outlets who also have a financial stake in these dealings?

Hmmm....manipulation, perhaps?

I have had "Ding dong ding dong ding dong day. Frosty the Snowman has melted away!" on my mind quite often during the holidays.

For what it's worth I've been able to rip this CD into iTunes on more than one occasion using various PC's I owned at the time.  Not sure if that really applies to the controversy but I never had any problems combating any potential copy protection techniques concerning the album.

I listened to the record a couple of times this holiday season and it sounds terrific.

Brian does some of his best work when 1.) he loves the idea and 2.) no one pays attention so he can do whatever he wants. The man clearly enjoys Christmas, and the hype machine from BWPS had settled down by this point.

So he makes a real, inspired, lovely record. It easily matches the later covers albums and (in my opinion) the Beach Boys' '60s effort as well. The originals, incidentally, sound fabulous. Kudos to Clive Davis for signing him up to do this, and shame on Clive Davis for not pushing it further and harder in subsequent years.

FWIW, this seems to be the european version. The US version had a stronger glitter effect on the cover and Melinda mentioned on Brian's messageboard that they were kinda pissed that someone messed up with the european release.

Here's the US version:

(https://i.discogs.com/ie_aciGSKUKcpoa8D86LqotwD6akl-D1o--7thoLZis/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:536/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEyOTEz/MzAxLTE1NDQzODg4/NzItOTY1Ny5qcGVn.jpeg)