What, though, of the less popular examples? Well, they tend to end up being sold off for twenty pence per copy in Woolworths’ by the second week of January, and rarely if ever make annual reappearances to delight listeners. There are far more of these than most people could probably imagine; late in 1993 for example, when the festive charts were being dominated by the admittedly decidedly unChristmassy Babe by Take That (notable only for its inexplicable ‘Zombie Gary Barlow shows Mark Owen where to find estranged family in Communist Russia’ video, and for Robbie Williams accidentally revealing his true evil alien identity when they performed it on the 3D special of the BBC’s Children In Need) and Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby (the briefly massively popular creation of none other than Noel Edmonds, who was really letting the side down on this occasion), Radio 1 could be heard frantically plugging two far more seasonally inclined singles that got precisely nowhere. One of these was Walking On Air, a suspiciously-titled slow ballad from Tim Vincent clone-festooned Ian Levine-produced boy band that arrived too early Bad Boys Inc., and the other was the far more curious Merry X-Mess by Rotterdam Termination Source. Previously responsible for the Kristian Schmid-endorsed Poing, a record that basically consisted of nothing more than ‘boing!’ sounds over a rave drum track, the Euro novelty dance act made their bid for Christmas chart success with a truly baffling blend of sampled Victorian carollers and frightening speed techno. It seemed remarkably popular with the station’s daytime DJs, for some reason, but did not enjoy quite as much popularity with listeners.
Contemporaneous to both of these, and outselling them by far while still posing nothing even vaguely resembling a threat to the commercial momentum of Howard Donald riding a bike in a furry hat, was I Was Born On Christmas Day by Saint Etienne featuring Tim Burgess. It is fair to say that 1993 had been a year of contrasting fortunes for the two artists concerned. Following the release of their debut album Foxbase Alpha in 1991 and the slow-burning acclaim that it engendered, Saint Etienne had seen their recent singles climb ever higher in the charts and their 1993 follow-up So Tough meet with a rapturous reception. Tim Burgess and The Charlatans, however, were on anything but an upward trajectory. 1992 had seen the band subjected to a particularly sustained, vindictive and unwarranted music press backlash (something that certain music journalists have skipped over very conspicuously when consulting otherwise exhaustive documentation on what they were doing at that point in time), resulting in the fantastic album Between 10th & 11th being virtually ignored, which was hardly what they needed at a time when they were still struggling to cope with the sudden disillusioned departure of original guitarist Jon Baker and bassist Martin Blunt’s hospitalisation with severe depression. With The Stone Roses still bound up in recording-preventing legal hassles, Happy Mondays disintegrating into drug-addled chaos and dancing with Zippy from Rainbow on The Word, and Inspiral Carpets following up an unexpectedly critically acclaimed album with a monumentally lacklustre single named How It Should Be, The Charlatans were an easy target and the music press took full advantage of that fact. Tim Burgess nonetheless seemed characteristically upbeat and hopeful in interviews, but early in 1993 never-predictable keyboard player Rob Collins gave a lift to a casual acquaintance and somehow ended up as an accessory to an armed robbery, resulting in a short stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Yet despite the odds being stacked so decisively against them, The Charlatans refused to share the music press’ belief that “their time has well and truly gone, forever”. Recording sessions for the third album were scheduled around Collins’ sentence, and as the summer drew on the band embarked on ‘Day Tripper’, a doubleheader minitour with Ride that provoked an excited article in the NME about the possibility that a magnificent rebirth of British pop music might be just around the corner. Of course one was, and The Charlatans’ Up To Our Hips would play a major part in its early stages, but few could have realised this late in 1993 when the band’s vocalist unexpectedly showed up duetting on someone else’s record. This was not Saint Etienne’s first duet, or indeed their last; earlier in 1993, Debsey Wykes had provided guest vocals on their revival of Candlewick Green’s 1973 hit Who Do You Think You Are?, and the band would later make memorable collaborations with a number of other artists, most notably French singer-songwriter Etienne Daho. It’s also entirely possible that Adam Buxton may have been offering his services as a vocalist when Cracknell aggressively told him to “fuck off” during the ‘Gig Survival Guide’ on The Adam And Joe Show. Nor indeed was it the last time Burgess would make a guest appearance on somebody else’s record; most notably, he lent a note of interestingness to the otherwise bafflingly overhyped Chemical Brothers with his amusingly laid-back lyrics for their volume-crazed backing track on Life Is Sweet. Nobody seems to be entirely sure of whether they were telling the truth or not, but Saint Etienne have claimed on more than one occasion that their original intention was to get Dean ‘Dermo’ Dermody, erstwhile vocalist with short-lived two-great-singles-and-a-lacklustre-album Madchester heroes Northside, in to duet with Sarah on I Was Born On Christmas Day. Having abandoned that idea, and presumably unable to get hold of Gary Newby from The Railway Children or Andy Spearpoint from New FADS, the band turned instead to Tim Burgess, and he proved to be the ideal choice, his fey spacey vocals combining wonderfully with Sarah’s singing style and his infectious enthusiasm for all things upbeat and positive infusing every last second of the finished track.
The idea for I Was Born On Christmas Day came about because Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley was one of those unfortunate individuals whose birthday fell on the same day as that of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and thus no doubt had to suffer that much-feared childhood trauma of receiving ‘joint’ presents. Other famous personages to have enjoyed the mixed blessings of sharing their birthday with that of the Lord Jesus Christ include old-before-her-time crooner Dido (the polar musical opposite of Saint Etienne and The Charlatans if ever there was one), creator of The Twilight Zone and the unintentionally hilarious Rod Serling’s Night Gallery Rod Serling, and scientific pioneer and banknote adorner Sir Isaac Newton. Opening with a delightful burst of studio chatter from Burgess (“ha ha ha… roll the tape!”), I Was Born On Christmas Day avoids the temptation to go all-out with an opulent Christmassy arrangement, opting instead to stick with the usual formula and incorporate a couple of appropriate inflections and trimmings. A standard Saint Etienne electropop-styled backing is embellished by percussive chimes, swirling ringing sounds, brief bursts of melodica (not a particularly Christmassy sound in itself, but nonetheless inextricably linked to it in that melodicas were invariably given as presents to spoilt children who refused to let anyone else have a go on them), a faux-psychedelic pink noise sequencer that enters euphorically as the song fades out, and a ringing two-note guitar solo that is clearly intended to resemble the peal of a bell. Given the tendency of both acts (at that point in their careers anyway) to lean towards opaque and whispered performances, and indeed the sentiment of the song itself, I Was Born On Christmas Day could easily have ended up veering too far towards the wrong end of the ‘sugary’ scale (although, thankfully, there was never any risk of it turning into a Dido record), but instead it is a bright, ringing, chiming piece that perfectly evokes the invigorating chill of a frosty winter morning.
The lyrics are not specifically about Christmas as such, concerning themselves with the yearning thoughts of a pair of fictitious lovers (although Tim and Sarah were so convincing in the parts that they could easily have been a couple in real life) excitedly counting down the winter months and “getting groovy after Hallowe’en” as they await their Christmas reunion. Coming across almost like extracts from letters to each other, the lyrics are alternately frustrated (“spent the summer holed up in a room” – “looking pretty, won’t you be here soon?”) and excited (“in December, my heart’s full of spring” – “had to call you, tell you everything”), hinting at a wistful dream of marriage (“Tim and Sarah went and tied the knot”) in their quaint little hometown. A charming, touching vignette, this is in effect an attempt to depict the everyday reality behind the quaint snow-covered towns depicted in Christmas Card artwork, even if this particular one has apparently recently had its town hall pulled down. As if to illustrate this, the video for the single featured a staged ‘wedding’ between Tim and Sarah that fell somewhere between indie shabbiness and traditional Christmas card\Quality Street tin mock-Victoriana (no doubt with Rotterdam Termination Source’s sampled singers carolling away just out of view), and the single was also plugged with a breathless performance on The Word, providing one of those unusual timely but understated conjunctures of date and event that people look back on with fondness as the moment that, for them, marked the official moment at which Christmas ‘started’ that year.
I Was Born On Christmas Day was ostensibly the lead track on Saint Etienne’s Xmas 93 EP, which came wrapped in a decidedly unChristmassy cover featuring a subtle blue and white modernist design and a heavily stylised cat graphic, but it’s fair to say that its companion pieces were hardly of a similarly high standard. Their cover of Billy Fury’s My Christmas Prayer was an interesting choice given a suitably interesting neo-ambient arrangement, but Snowplough and Peterloo were instrumentals that bore all the hallmarks of having been knocked up in a spare couple of minutes while they awaited the delivery of some equipment. Nonetheless, most of their fans were sufficiently charmed by the lead track to buy a copy from Our Price (because it seemed somehow less corporate than the other high street stores, despite being more or less the same), dance to it at the Student Union with Allison from their tutorial group, get a bit annoyed that it wasn’t on the recently-released non-LP tracks compilation You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone, and then file it quietly away. How many of those people have felt the urge to listen to Peterloo more than once is open to question, but it’s a fair bet that they still give the lead track a quiet spin or two around a certain time of year. For obvious reasons I Was Born On Christmas Day is hardly the best known single of either of the parties involved, which is a shame as it effectively represents two charming and lyrically expressive acts at their most charming and lyrically expressive.
ON THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… if ‘they’ pulled the Town Hall down, how come it’s in the video for I Was Born On Christmas Day?
