The Seventies are well-known for forward thinking fashions, world changing events and copious quantities of joyous Christmas and Holiday music. But what about the Eighties? Turns out that decade had some Holiday tunes as well.
Eighties themed Yuletide samplers have included The Edge Of Christmas, Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas, That Merry '80s Christmas Album, VH1 The Big 80s Christmas and the first A Very Special Christmas disc from 1987.
In 2009, Sony issued Awesome! 80s Christmas, a fifteen track CD collection including some of the biggest Eighties artists on the planet such as The Hooters, New Kids on the Block and Buster Poindexter & his Banshees of Blue. Awesome! was exactly that providing bang for the buck (I paid $3.99 for my new copy) and offering yet another place to find the once hard-to-find track "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses. (I now have that song on eighteen different discs but I ain't complaining.) Awesome! was actually reissued in 2014 as '80s Christmas with new artwork and the exact same tracklist.
Also in 2014, Sony put another shiny ornament on the tree of Eighties Xmas compilations with 80s Wonderland, a collection of twelve tracks, including seven that were on Awesome!, a couple from A Very Special Christmas and a lost track from disco divas The Weather Girls. I got mine on the cheap specifically for The Weather Girls song from 1983 which I thought I didn't have but it turns out the full length track is on the Girls' Success album so now I have the single edit as well.
This Christmas, Sony/Legacy officially added the Eighties to its growing stable of The Classic Christmas Album series of compilations along with albums from Sarah McLachlan, Celtic Thunder and Earth Wind & Fire. Titled The Classic Christmas '80s Album, the CD has fifteen tracks you just might be familiar with, especially if you bought any of the other discs featured here today. The two tracks that don't appear on any of the other albums discussed here today are Ray Parker Jr.'s "Elfbusters" "Christmas Time Is Here" which I only have on two Parker compilations and Fishbone's rant "Slick Nick, You Devil You" which I have on a vinyl EP and two Fishbone anthologies (well, its just one anthology, just released under two different titles) though this version is listed as a previously unreleased demo version it sounds exactly the same as the versions I already have. You think next year is too soon for a Now That's What I Call An 80s Christmas?
Hazy Shade of Winter is a Christmas song? Yes, winter is in the title and, if I recall correctly, the scene in Less Than Zero when it is used is around Christmas time - but that's stretching it (in my book).
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