FEATURE:
“While Bing Crosby Sings White Christmas”
Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again at Forty
___________
WHEN one considers the cannon…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at Abbey Road Studios
of Kate Bush, they often look at the more popular tracks and songs included on albums. Many forget that she has released and recorded some terrific tracks that either flew under the critical radar or were never included on studio albums. One song that I especially love that doesn’t get a lot of love from the media is December Will Be Magic Again. Released on 17th November, 1980, its fortieth anniversary is upcoming, and it is a song that, despite only reaching number-twenty-nine in the U.K., is actually one of Bush’s most underrated songs! I guess a lot of artists put out Christmas singles but, in 1979, I wonder whether there would have been any demand from EMI for Bush to do that. I think it is more likely that she had this image of a wintery scene and it tied into Christmas. Bush always had that sense of wonder and, on her first commercial Christmas outing, she managed to record something appropriately magical. I have mused whether it should have been included on her 1980 album, Never for Ever, but I guess it is very specific so would have not really sat alongside the rest of the songs. It is interesting to think that, thirty-one years after December Will Be Magic Again was released, Bush put out 50 Words for Snow – extending the themes and dynamic of December Will Be Magic Again but making it more expansive, immersive and rich.
I really love December Will Be Magic Again, as it is a great single that beautifully conjures the romance of snow and the Christmas period. There are few who would rank it alongside the classic Christmas numbers but, as Bush premiered another song, Home for Christmas, on The Comic Strip in 1992, the initial single must have inspired her in some ways all those years later. Despite there being no official video for December Will Be Magic Again, Bush did perform the song on T.V. twice. Once was on the Christmas Snowtime Special on the BBC on 22nd December, 1979; she then performed it for a Christmas special called Kate on 28th December, 1979. The original track was written and originally recorded in at Abbey Road Studio 2 London with Preston Heyman on drums, sleigh bells and maracas; Alan Murphy on guitar; Kuma Harada on bass, with Bush on piano. There is that mix of the traditional Christmas imagery (“December will be magic again/Take a husky to the ice/While Bing Crosby sings White Christmas/He makes you feel nice/December will be magic again/Old Saint Nicholas up the chimney/Just a-popping up in my memory”) mixed with lines that could only come from Bush’s imagination (“Light the candle-lights/To conjure Mr. Wilde/Into the Silent Night/Ooh, it's quiet inside/Here in Oscar's mind”). She definitely ticks off the Christmas song wish-list of common images: snow, Father Christmas, Silent Night and mistletoe are all lovingly mentioned.
Bush’s voice is soothing, beautiful and child-like; she is never wild and acrobatic, yet she manages to summon up this postcard scene of houses topped with snow and there being this stillness. I really love some of the more descriptive passages (“Ooh, dropping down in my parachute/The white city, she is so beautiful/Upon the black-soot icicled roofs/Ooh, and see how I fall/See how I fall/("Fall!") [backwards]/Like the snow/Come to cover the lovers/(Cover the lovers/But don't you wake them up)/Come to sparkle the dark up/(Sparkle the dark up/With just a touch of make-up)/Come to cover the muck up/(Cover the muck up/Ooh, with a little luck”). In their list ranking all (twenty-nine) of Bush’s singles, December Will Be Magic Again came in twenty-fifth according to The Guardian:
“Kate Bush had a whole album’s worth of flatly brilliant, at least vaguely festive-themed music in her – 2011’s 50 Words for Snow – but her first attempt at a Christmas single 31 years earlier fell oddly flat, never quite sounding as magical as its title suggests”.
December Will Be Magic Again’s B-side is Warm and Soothing - it finds Bush singing with just her piano accompaniment. This was the first song she recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Maybe some felt that songs like Warm and Soothing, and December Will Be Magic Again sound too similar to Bush’s first two albums; maybe they were looking for progression or a deeper vocal, perhaps.
There is a definite shift in terms of sound regarding the songs Bush recorded at AIR Studios and those at Abbey Road Studios. In January 1980, Bush moved to Abbey Road Studios when recording for Never for Ever, and one can hear a definite flourishing and change from that point on. I like the image of Bush sitting in Studio 2 and writing this beautiful song, perhaps with no specific plan for it right away – just capturing something that was in her mind that struck her. It is a shame that people do not really write classic Christmas songs anymore, and I listen back to songs like December Will Be Magic Again and cherish them. If the song was released in 1979 as initially hoped, it would have been slayed by Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime - which got to number-six and was a big success ((would the public have been as kind to Bush’s single if they had McCartney’s one out there?!). The fact December Will Be Magic Again got to number-sixteen is not so much seasonable largess and kindness, and more the fact the track is very beautiful and absorbing – many of her other singles did not reach as high yet are celebrated more! Forty years after it came out, I think people should add Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again to their Christmas rotation. I would put the song in my top-twenty favourite songs of hers, and it deserves keener ears and more love! Maybe we will not get a white or ideal Christmas this year but, one listen to December Will Be Magic Again, and one is…
PHOTO CREDIT: @ellladee/Unsplash
TRANSPORTED to an idyllic Christmas snow globe.