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The Hallmark and Lifetime networks are known for their prolific output of made-for-television holiday movies each year. Even in the age of streaming, they bring in impressive cable television ratings, perhaps aided by how easy they are to leave on while, say, baking several batches of gingerbread for a tree lighting ceremony. They also have […] More
Sandra Bernhard was early for a midmorning Chelsea coffee date, already perched at the cafe with a hefty cup. She sat not inside at the reserved table, but outdoors in a street shed, in full view of passers-by. She waved at neighbors and greeted her dog walker in a barrage of “honeys” and blown kisses, trilling a song to one of her charges — “Regiiiina” — that stopped the puggle (and some other pooches) in their tracks.The comedian, actor and singer has lived in Chelsea for more than two decades, raising her daughter, Cicely, now 25 and a Brooklynite, there with her partner, Sara Switzer, a writer. Since the ’80s, she has been an emblem of the city’s downtown cool, a spiky transgressive with enough cultural currency to set Broadway aflame with a one-woman show. She sold a Los Angeles home around 2010, and now, unlike most celebrities of her vintage, has only the one local address. (“I don’t need three country houses,” she said.)It’s only natural, then, that Bernhard’s year-end shows at Joe’s Pub, which she started performing in 2005, are as much a part of the city’s holiday season as Midtown gridlock and glittery department store displays — which Bernhard has a stake in too. This year, Cicely, an artist, worked on the windows at Bergdorf Goodman, her mother said with pride.Her daughter also inspired a musical choice in “Easy Listening,” the latest Joe’s Pub series: a Lana Del Rey song; Cicely had been a fan in high school. “She would apply the winged liquid eyeliner, and it got everywhere, so that drove us crazy,” Bernhard said. “But now I’m really into Lana, and I do really get it.”That cover was all Bernhard, 68, would reveal about “Easy Listening,” which runs Dec. 26 through New Year’s Eve. It’s billed as a tour of her musical inspirations, including the Supremes, Tina Turner and Joni Mitchell, and will also include all new material and comedic riffs (which she wouldn’t share either). Bernhard likes to keep it fresh for her many returning fans. “There’s been so much to write about — not all of it pleasant,” she said. “But the trick is to find a way into it that makes it sort of ironic, or madcap.”Politics get only sidelong attention. Focusing directly on the state of the world, she said, “becomes very intense and melancholy and a little bit depressing. That’s just not my thing at all.” Even in her recent roles on “Pose” and “American Horror Story: NYC” — both set in the 1980s New York demimonde she inhabited — she brought a righteous earthiness, with some joie de vivre.“You had to have a little bit of an edge,” Bernhard said of her early days, “otherwise I would have been crushed.”Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesAndy Cohen, the Bravo executive, is a longtime friend, a fan — he’s hardly ever missed a Joe’s Pub gig, he said — and an enabler, featuring Bernhard frequently on his late-night show “Watch What Happens Live” and giving her a home on his Sirius radio channel. “The things that go through her filter are so specific and unique,” he said, whether she’s reminiscing about her starter job as a manicurist in 1970s Beverly Hills, or taking on the series “Yellowstone” — “which is a show I don’t watch,” Cohen said, “but I still want to hear her riff on it.”“She has her own rhythm, she has her own language — I think she’s something of a poet,” he added. And as a cultural figure, “I don’t think she gets enough credit.”Bernhard has clocked a lot of cutting-edge moments: A generation before Ali Wong earned acclaim for doing raunchy comedy while pregnant, Bernhard was blazing the theater world, including on Broadway with her solo show “I’m Still Here … Damn It!” — foul-mouthed with a sheer dress and a baby bump, that she pointedly never addressed. “First of all, being pregnant is so, sort of, pedestrian,” she said. “There’s a billion people having babies all the time, so why talk about it? It wasn’t my jam. And I loved it. I had so much fun being pregnant, being onstage, performing, and not just sitting around waiting to have a baby.” (The show also drew criticism for a bit about Mariah Carey that the singer found racist; Bernhard has said her language was socially acceptable commentary at the time, but also acknowledged that comedy standards have changed.)She hosted a 10 p.m. talk show for A&E long before the chatter about women taking the helm in late night. And years before Ellen DeGeneres came out, Bernhard played one of the first openly queer characters on TV, as Nancy, a friend on “Roseanne,” in the ’90s; she was also an outspoken presence during the peak of the AIDS epidemic.“She was one of the people who taught us — who taught me — how to activate, how to be present and show up,” said Billy Porter, her co-star on “Pose,” the FX series about underground ball culture, whose characters are haunted by the disease.For Bernhard, it was a chance to mine her real-life emotions — she lost many friends to AIDS, she said — in a character, a nurse, who was, as she put it, unglamourously “in the trenches.”She and Porter were the two cast members who had personally experienced the first wave of the AIDS crisis. “We really connected on that — the other people were acting a history lesson, but we had actually lived it,” he said. “We were telling stories of intense trauma, and it was great to have her there to help me.”In a marigold sweatshirt, mom jeans and high-tops, her auburn curls still effortlessly springy, Bernhard cuts a youthful, relaxed figure. Her vibe is surprisingly calm. “I’m not a frantic person,” she said. “I don’t need to run from one thing to the next to feel fulfilled.” Over coffee, we talked about parenting, schools, real estate; she is blissfully domestic, and loves doing dishes and laundry. “It’s very meditative,” she said.Where once she was known for tearing up the town with her onetime pal Madonna, now you might find her glued to TV sports. “I adore bowling, it’s my favorite thing to do on Sunday, watch bowling on ESPN,” she posted on Instagram a couple of years ago. A Michigan native, she also loves the Detroit Lions. From age 10, she was raised by her artist mother and proctologist father in Scottsdale, Ariz., the youngest of four siblings and the only daughter. “I knew when I was 4 or 5 that I would be a performer,” she said.Bernhard, left, onstage with Madonna at a 1989 benefit. These days, Bernhard spends her free time closer to home.Vinnie Zuffante/Getty ImagesEarly in her career she was known for tearing down celebrity culture with more than a little bite. Being tough was something of a persona — starting out in the ’70s, as a woman performing, “You had to have a little bit of an edge,” she said, “otherwise I would have been crushed.”Now she doesn’t have the zeal to skewer the social media-influencer-industrial complex; it doesn’t interest her, and anyway, she has evolved. “It takes a lot of energy to stay with your dukes up, right?” she said. “But I do like it when certain people are a little intimidated by me. It’s better that way.”Though she was too demure to name names, she has influenced a younger generation of performers.“She was so out there and wild with her style and the tone of her material,” said the comic Cameron Esposito, whose conservative Catholic family forbade her from watching Bernhard on “Roseanne” or in her many ribald appearances on the “Late Show With David Letterman.” (She did anyway.) “Everything about her was outside the television landscape that I was being fed, her mannerisms, how brash she was,” Esposito said.For the actor and comedian John Early, who like Bernhard uses music in his act, she was a path-setter — “a real hero,” he said.“The way she unapologetically drops into covers and sings them with total abandon and sincerity gave me permission to do the same,” he said. “She’s like a psychedelic cabaret artist.”Her off-kilter delivery and flair — “her grooviness,” he called it — also inspired him. “One time I sat right at the edge of the stage of her holiday show and she roasted me for ordering the pizza popcorn,” he added. “It was an honor.”Her fan base is devoted, flying in from out of town, Bernhard said; one night, she did five encores. But she doesn’t rehearse the storytelling in advance — she’s still mainlining the spontaneity she had starting out. “She’s very much in the moment,” said Mitch Kaplan, her musical director, who has worked with her since 1985. “When she’s singing songs, too, she’ll never sing them the same way. One of the thrills in performing for her is you really have to listen to her, and follow her.”For die-hards like Cohen, the holiday show is Bernhard at her best. “It’s celebratory; it’s funny; it’s raw; it feels underground, like everything she does. I find it really inspiring,” he said.“I ran into her at the gym the other day,” Cohen added, “and I said, Please tell me you’re going to be talking about Barbra Streisand’s audiobook at the Joe’s Pub show! I said, I need this into my veins. She was like, I’m still figuring it out, honey. She always surprises me.”Requests from famous fans aside, Bernhard said her normal life offstage has helped her endure. “I’m always happy doing dishes,” she said. “And I’m also happy when I get onstage and the band is playing and I walk out and I see people who are having fun and connecting. I love that moment. That has all the meaning that I need.” More
New tunes from Brandy, Cher and the Philadelphia Eagles may find their place among classics in your holiday playlist.Recent holiday releases include (clockwise from top left) albums from the Philadelphia Eagles, Samara Joy, Cher and Sabrina Carpenter.Dear listeners,Musically speaking, the holidays are a time when we return to perennial favorites — the fact that the current top five artists on the Billboard Hot 100 are Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms, Wham! and Burl Ives certainly attests to that.But there’s also something to be said for sprinkling some fresh holiday tunes in with the old to keep your playlist from getting as stale as last year’s Christmas cookie. Where ever will you find new holiday music? Never fear: Today’s Amplifier has you covered.Every song on this playlist came out this holiday season. A few are covers of classics, but they all put a novel twist on their material, whether it’s Cher doing her best Chuck Berry, the Lumineers paying homage to Willie Nelson, or Samara Joy channeling Judy Garland.This mix features quite a few new holiday originals, too: Sabrina Carpenter turns a sweet character from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” into a romantic rival, Brandy wishes Christmas would never end, and Norah Jones and Laufey find the Christmas spirit among the pine trees.You can add these songs to your existing holiday playlist, or — if you’re hosting a gathering and really want to impress your guests with how up to date you are on music — just play this one the whole way through. And if you need even more Amplifier holiday cheer, you can always revisit my playlist of are-they-or-aren’t-they Christmas songs.Lastly, thanks to all who have submitted songs and stories about the older song that defined your year. There’s still time to send me your suggestions; you can do that here. We may use your response in an upcoming edition of The Amplifier.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. Cher: “Run Rudolph Run”Cher’s first-ever holiday album has a refreshingly no-nonsense title: “Christmas.” ’Nuff said. Though the LP’s single is the glittery, dance-floor-ready original “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” my favorite track is Cher’s rousing rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run,” which allows her to lean into her voice’s rock ’n’ roll attitude. (Listen on YouTube)2. Brandy: “Christmas Everyday”Brandy wants time to freeze on “Christmas Everyday,” a jubilantly upbeat number from her recently released “Christmas With Brandy.” “I don’t know another time when everybody shines so bright,” she sings, pining (ahem) for it to be Christmas every day. (Listen on YouTube)3. Sabrina Carpenter: “Cindy Lou Who”This season, the irreverent pop singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter put out her first holiday-themed release, the six-song EP “Fruitcake.” On this plaintive, breathily sung ballad, Carpenter becomes obsessed with an ex’s new girlfriend, who just may be from Whoville. (Listen on YouTube)4. Norah Jones & Laufey: “Better Than Snow”It’s an intergenerational summit of the jazz-pop girlies as the veteran crooner Norah Jones joins forces with the 24-year-old Icelandic sensation Laufey on this plinking, piano-driven song about celebrating Christmas in decidedly un-Christmas-like weather: “Now as I sweat through my ugly sweater, Christmas with you is better than snow.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Bright Eyes featuring John Prine: “Christmas in Prison”Bright Eyes tackle this bittersweet John Prine tune, with a little help from the late, great man himself. Conor Oberst sings in his warmly cracked voice and an extended sample from “A John Prine Christmas” enlivens the cover with Prine’s wry spirit and inimitable storytelling. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Lumineers: “Pretty Paper (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)”This April, the Lumineers were part of a star-studded group of musicians who performed Willie Nelson songs at the Hollywood Bowl, in honor of the legend’s 90th birthday. It’s finally seasonally appropriate to appreciate their song selection: “Pretty Paper,” Nelson’s enduring Christmas classic. (Listen on YouTube)7. The Philly Specials featuring Howie Roseman: “The Dreidel Song”Don’t think I forgot about Hanukkah, or this very delightful holiday album that members of the Philadelphia Eagles (yes, those Eagles) released this year. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe this is the first time the general manager of a professional sports team has sung lead on an Amplifier selection. (Listen on YouTube)8. Ladytron: “All Over By Xmas”The electro-pop group Ladytron create a dreamy, glacial atmosphere on this new original song about a poorly timed breakup: “Yes, it will be all over by Christmas.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Morgan Reese: “Scrooge Xmas”The young bedroom-pop artist Morgan Reese lets loose an admittedly catchy “bah humbug” on her first holiday release, the sparkly little ditty “Scrooge Xmas.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Samara Joy: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”And finally, the Grammys’ reigning best new artist, the 24-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy, brings her buttery tone and intuitive phrasing to this Christmas classic, proving — as she does throughout her new EP, “A Joyful Holiday” — that she possesses a musical intelligence well beyond her years. (Listen on YouTube)She reminds me of a chess game with someone I admire,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“10 Festive (and Brand-New) Holiday Songs” track listTrack 1: Cher, “Run Rudolph Run”Track 2: Brandy, “Christmas Everyday”Track 3: Sabrina Carpenter, “Cindy Lou Who”Track 4: Norah Jones & Laufey, “Better Than Snow”Track 5: Bright Eyes featuring John Prine, “Christmas in Prison”Track 6: The Lumineers, “Pretty Paper (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)”Track 7: The Philly Specials featuring Howie Roseman, “The Dreidel Song”Track 8: Ladytron, “All Over By Xmas”Track 9: Morgan Reese, “Scrooge Xmas”Track 10: Samara Joy, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”Bonus TracksSpeaking of the Philly Specials, I cannot recommend highly enough this adorable and hilarious short, created by the Philadelphia animation studio unPOP, which accompanies the N.F.L. team’s album “A Philly Special Christmas Special.” It reminds me of all the stop-motion animation classics of my childhood and features, among other charming cameos, the Kelce Brothers, Jordan Mailata and a visit from St. Nick (Foles). Guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Unless you root for the Dallas Cowboys.Also: I spent much of the weekend immersed in the recently released, almost-six-hour third volume of Joni Mitchell’s Archive series — another experience I’d highly recommend. One of my favorite discoveries was this alternate cut of her 1972 hit “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” featuring Neil Young and his backing band the Stray Gators. Talk about Canadian excellence!Sprinkle in new tunes from Brandy, Cher and the Philadelphia Eagles along with Yuletide classics. More
Our critics on 10 new holiday albums from Cher, Robert Glasper, Sabrina Carpenter and more.There is no one correct way to celebrate the holiday season in song. For some, reverence is key. But often the best Yuletide numbers are the ones that fiddle around with tradition, taking the familiar components of joy and generosity and remixing them into something silly, salacious or downright odd.Adam Blackstone, ‘A Legacy Christmas’Adam Blackstone, who has been a bassist and musical director for Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake as well as many television shows, revels in his jazz background on his own Legacy albums. “A Legacy Christmas” merges brassy, swinging big-band arrangements with electronically tweaked R&B, and it’s packed with guests: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Boyz II Men, Andra Day. There are glossy, muscular revamps of songs like “Lil Drummer Boy” (which has BJ the Chicago Kid singing alongside Blackstone’s melodic bass) and “Someday at Christmas” (with Robert Randolph’s slide guitar), as well as Blackstone’s own songs, including the neo-Motown “Christmas Kisses,” which has Blackstone rapping alongside Keke Palmer, who sings like she’s fronting the Jackson 5. JON PARELESBrandy, ‘Christmas With Brandy’Brandy leads with angst on her album “Christmas With Brandy,” which includes six songs she co-wrote including the opener, “Feels Different.” The moody, minor-key track leans into a deep post-breakup loneliness that “hurts the worst around Christmas,” even though “when I’m lovesick, you’re toxic.” But the rest of the album is cheerier and sultrier, like her upbeat, retro-styled “Christmas Everyday” and “Christmas Gift” (a duet with her daughter, Sy’rai) and the slow-motion come-on of “Christmas Party for Two.” The familiar songs play up Brandy’s misty tone and melismatic audacity. Her versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song” and even “Deck the Halls” are gauzy and leisurely. And who but Brandy would, in “Jingle Bells,” make an 11-note flourish out of “way”? PARELESSabrina Carpenter, ‘Fruitcake’The rising pop singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter brings her charmingly conversational and occasionally humorous sensibility to the six-song EP “Fruitcake,” her first holiday-themed release. Though she indulges in a straightforward, breathily sung “White Christmas,” the EP’s highlights are its irreverent originals, like “A Nonsense Christmas” (a holiday remix of Carpenter’s 2022 hit), the sleek, sassy “Is It New Years Yet?” and “Cindy Lou Who,” a piano ballad that playfully imagines the sweetest girl in Whoville as a romantic rival: “The snow’s gonna fall and the tree’s gonna glisten,” Carpenter sings. “And I’m gonna puke at the thought of you kissin’.” LINDSAY ZOLADZCher, ‘Christmas’Cher’s economically titled new album “Christmas” is an eclectic mix of holiday standards (a rollicking “Run Rudolph Run,” an especially lustful “Santa Baby”) and upbeat, electro-pop originals tailor-made for the woman who sang “Believe” (the strobe-lit “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” the fist-pumping “Angels in the Snow”). The guest list is star-studded and wide-ranging: Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé and Darlene Love all drop by to duet with Cher on their own holiday classics, while Cyndi Lauper provides an assist on “Put a Little Holiday in Your Heart,” a country-tinged Christmas tune first recorded by LeAnn Rimes. But the album’s most memorably bonkers moment is surely “Drop Top Sleigh Ride,” a campy party anthem featuring a pun-stuffed rap verse from Tyga. The holidays just aren’t the holidays until you’ve heard Cher sing, “Turn it up, it’s a vibe, it’s Christmas.” ZOLADZRobert Glasper, ‘In December’The keyboardist Robert Glasper is an expert in both abstruse jazz harmonies and sleek hip-hop grooves; he’s also a well-connected collaborator. He brings all those skills to Christmas songs on “In December,” a musicianly rumination on the season; it’s only available on Apple Music. Old carols get elaborate new chromatic convolutions and alternate melodies, while in their new songs, Glasper and his singers consider holiday tensions. In “Make It Home,” PJ Morton and Sevyn Streeter portray a couple wondering if they can possibly reconcile for Christmas; “December,” written by Glasper and Andra Day, cycles through a year of seasonal anxieties and longings. And in “Memories With Mama,” Tarriona Ball, who leads Tank and the Bangas, confides in deep-toned spoken words about how Christmas has changed since her childhood — she’s nostalgic, but realistic. PARELESClockwise from top left: Holiday albums from Gregory Porter, Adam Blackstone, Jon Pardi and Wheatus. Samara Joy, ‘A Joyful Holiday’The resonant, low-end power of Samara Joy’s voice really emerges on her version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me.” A Motown-era number sung sweetly by the Supremes and Stevie Wonder, it’s comforting molasses in Joy’s hands; at one point, she lingers over “twinkle,” toggling back and forth — eee-yuh-eee-yuh-eee-yuh — a caress and a promise. That’s the highlight of “A Joyful Holiday,” the first seasonal release from this sometimes startling jazz vocalist, who won best new artist at this year’s Grammys. See also her take on “Warm in December,” once sung by Julie London, which she renders as the most refined, stately and wise of come-ons. JON CARAMANICAJon Pardi, ‘Merry Christmas From Jon Pardi’For the past decade Jon Pardi has been, quite successfully, a country singer mindful of how the country singers before him conducted themselves. He’s a lightly unruly traditionalist, with an ear that favors Texas and Bakersfield and the, um, funkier sides of honky-tonk Nashville. So naturally, his first holiday album is a collection of frisky covers and originals that add just the faintest tweak to the canon. His take on Buck Owens’s “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” is cheeky and loose, and “I’ve Been Bad, Santa” — sung a couple of years ago by the Australian pop star Peach PRC — is a flirtatious duet with Pillbox Patti. “Reindeer” is a slow-walk heartbreaker about getting left behind by someone you love during the jolly season: “Might be a white Christmas, but all this snow just feels like rain, dear.” And on the lighthearted “Beer for Santa,” he swaps out the milk and cookies under the tree for something harder, then avers, “I might stay up and have one with him, too.” CARAMANICAThe Philly Specials, ‘A Philly Special Christmas Special’Last year, three offensive linemen who play for the Philadelphia Eagles — Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson — stunned the football world by putting out a surprisingly competent Christmas EP as the Philly Specials. This season, they’re upping the ante with a full album, featuring cameos from Philadelphia musical luminaries like Patti LaBelle, Amos Lee and Waxahatchee. Mailata — a 6-foot-8 left tackle who last year appeared as “Thingamabob” on “The Masked Singer” — is the star of the show, holding his own with LaBelle on a duet of “This Christmas” and nailing that high note at the end of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but Johnson also impresses with his resonant country croon on a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper.” As for Kelce? Well, as Philly fans already know, he’s got a lot of heart. And, for a spirited reworking of the Pogues’ most famous song, here retitled “Fairytale of Philadelphia,” he recruits perhaps the most high-profile guest of them all, his brother Travis, who sings approximately as well as his girlfriend can play professional football. ZOLADZGregory Porter, ‘Christmas Wish’The jazz singer Gregory Porter brings his kindly baritone and a social conscience to his Christmas album. He reaches back to vintage Motown for the antiwar, pro-equality “Someday at Christmas,” and three songs of his own recognize troubles he wants to rise above for the season. In “Everything’s Not Lost,” he wills himself toward year-end optimism despite “all this misery” and “children in fear.” And with the surging gospel of “Christmas Wish,” he recalls the lessons in generosity his mother taught. Most of the backing uses genteel string arrangements, but in “Christmas Waltz,” with a jazz trio, he reminds listeners how he can swing. PARELESWheatus, ‘Just a Dirtbag Christmas’Skip the clever and fun and totally worthy originals on this EP: You’re here for “Christmas Dirtbag,” the Yuletide updating of “Teenage Dirtbag,” the 2000 debut single from the Long Island punk-pop band Wheatus. The original is somehow both a zeitgeist-definer and a curio. This updating morphs the main character into someone passed over by Santa, perhaps a fate more cruel than being ignored by the girl who mesmerizes him in the original. But here, in a holiday spirit, there’s a twist — it turns out Santa’s a dirtbag, too, and he’s bearing gifts after all: “I’ve got two tickets to AC/DC, baby/After-show party at CBGB.” CARAMANICA More
Nia Wilkerson has spent years hearing that she looks like the girl from “The Polar Express.” On TikTok, she’s leaning into it.“Oh my God! You’re the girl from ‘The Polar Express,’” a tourist yelled at Nia Wilkerson.Dressed in a pink nightgown, Ms. Wilkerson was dancing in front of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan for a TikTok video.Over the course of the next two hours on Monday afternoon, dozens more people stopped and stared. Many of them filmed her from afar or asked to take selfies with her.“Wait, are you really the girl from the movie?” a passer-by asked.The answer to that question is no. Ms. Wilkerson, a senior at St. John’s University in Queens, was 3 years old in 2004, when “The Polar Express” was released.The movie, a box office hit directed by Robert Zemeckis that was based on a children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, has long drawn criticism because of its brand of motion-capture animation, which gives its characters an eerie, zombified look.Hero Girl in a scene from “The Polar Express,” a 2004 movie made with motion-capture animation that has been criticized for the odd look of its characters.Ms. Wilkerson, 22, said that ever since she was an elementary school student in Woodbridge, Va., people had been telling her she looks like Hero Girl, a character in the film who is also known as Holly. Later, a high school crush pointed out the resemblance.“That was heartbreaking,” she joked.Since then, Ms. Wilkerson, who stands five foot tall, has come to embrace her digital doppelgänger. This is the fourth holiday season she has spent making TikTok videos in the guise of Hero Girl. Each year, her popularity has grown. She now has nearly a 250,000 followers.
@niasporin ♬ original sound – $ Ms. Wilkerson said she got the idea after seeing another woman on TikTok cosplaying as the character. “But she didn’t really look like her,” she said.In “The Polar Express,” Holly wears pigtails and a patterned pink nightgown. Ms. Wilkerson goes with a variation on the look for her TikToks.“It’s a seasonal gig,” she said, adding that she was recently swarmed by people in Elmo costumes while making a video in Times Square.Ms. Wilkerson posed with her fans in Rockefeller Center.Scott Rossi for The New York TimesAccompanying her on Monday were several of her St. John’s classmates, who acted as her unpaid film crew. “My friendship is my payment,” Ms. Wilkerson joked, adding she had bought the group food at the campus dining hall during the weeks of filming.She used to suffer from social anxiety, she said, but her TikTok alter ego has helped her overcome it. “No one in New York cares,” she said. “I would never do this anywhere else.”Ms. Wilkerson, who is studying television and film at St. John’s, has found ways to profit from her 15 minutes of seasonal fame. She participates in TikTok’s creator fund, a program that the company uses to pays certain people who make videos for the platform, she said. Musicians have reached out to her about making videos, she added. Her rate is about $250 per video, she said. Outside of the holiday season, she makes videos on other topics, but her views drop off precipitously.While most of the feedback has been positive, Ms. Wilkerson said she no longer read the replies to her videos, after having seen too many racist comments. Still, there have been upsides to her social media fame, like a recent collaboration with @jerseyyjoe, a popular TikTok creator known for his dance moves who sometimes makes videos dressed as Hero Boy from “The Polar Express.”
@jerseyyjoe The duo you never expected 🤣🚊🔥 ( DC: ME ) #jerseyclub #jerseyyjoe #jersey #trend #viral #fyp ♬ the polar express jersey club – Ali Beats After an afternoon of shooting, Ms. Wilkerson and her friends discussed their upcoming final exams while waiting for an F train on a subway station platform. Ms. Wilkerson mentioned an earlier subway video, during which she had accidentally kicked a passenger.After boarding a rush-hour train car, they wriggled into formation to film another TikTok. One of Ms. Wilkerson’s friends, Amanda Gopie, 20, pointed at a sign that read: “Don’t be someone’s subway story. Courtesy counts.”“That’s you,” Ms. Gopie said, to laughs from the others in the group.As the F train rolled toward Queens, Ms. Wilkerson and her friends recorded themselves singing “When Christmas Comes to Town,” a song from “The Polar Express.”“The best time of the year, when everyone comes home,” Ms. Wilkerson began.As her friends joined in to form a shaky chorus, a few riders perked their heads up in recognition. One told the singers to work on their pitch. The group decided they’d try another take. More
It was half past 3 the day after the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, and a pair of America’s most famous drag queens strode up to the spruce’s formidable footprint, chatting about abundance.“I don’t like being inundated with anything,” Jinkx Monsoon announced as holiday music jingled loudly nearby.“She has this conversation about Christianity,” BenDeLaCreme started to explain, before Jinkx resumed her gripe: “Christianity, the Kardashians and ‘Star Wars,’” she chimed back in. “All things that I have never asked to know about, but I know everything about.”The reason for their visit, however, was indeed the season. For the fifth year, the duo — both alums of the TV competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — are presenting a live Christmas show filled with dancing candy canes, glittery gowns and songs about trauma. (In 2020, Covid forced them off the road, so they made a movie.) What began in small standing-room-only clubs has grown into a 30-city theater tour that kicked off mid-November in Glasgow and wraps in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Dec. 30. The day after the queens’ stroll, on Dec. 1, their show hit Kings Theater in Brooklyn, a former movie palace that seats 3,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? More
Are you in need of another Christmas tradition, and a bit of fun? Enter: “Whamageddon.”Last Christmas I gave you my heartListening to Christmas music can bring people together. Not listening to a particular Christmas song, it turns out, can have the same effect.Please allow us to introduce a December tradition you may not know about: “Whamageddon.”The goal: To go as long as possible without hearing the 1984 Wham! song “Last Christmas” before Christmas Day.But the very next day you gave it awayIn Britain this month, a D.J. at a soccer stadium in Northamptonshire played the song during halftime of a match and faced a bit of (lighthearted) backlash.“I never knew people took it so seriously,” Matt Facer, the D.J., told BBC Radio. “I gave it a spin, thinking it would be quite funny to wipe out 7,000 people who couldn’t avoid it, but clearly it isn’t funny.”“I think it’s funny,” said Thomas Mertz, 42, who runs a Whamageddon website. “I sincerely hope that people aren’t too mad at D.J. Matt for playing the song.”This year, to save me from tearsThe game started about 18 years ago when Mertz and some friends in Denmark noticed how ubiquitous the song was and started telling each other when they had been “hit” with it, he said.Whamageddon has a Facebook page with more than 16,000 followers and a website that got more than 500,000 visitors last year, according to Mertz.“It’s just a funny little thing that a couple of idiots from Denmark did to entertain themselves during Christmas,” Mertz said.But the game is also about adding levity to a season that can be stressful or lonely.“It’s just not a good time of year to a lot of people,” Mertz said. “If we can add a little bit of fun to that, I think it’s worthwhile.”Are you ready to lose the game? Click above. I’ll give it to someone specialMertz emphasized that the game is not about disliking the song or its genre.“It’s a common misconception that people think we do this because we somehow hate Christmas music, or Wham!, or pop,” Mertz said.In fact, that could not be further from the truth.“You wouldn’t know it from looking at me. I am a 6-foot-5 bearded bald guy,” Mertz said, “but pop music is my guilty pleasure.” More
Nine tracks from Barbra Streisand, the 1975, Fleet Foxes and more get put to the Lindsay Test.Barbra Streisand, another (unlikely) queen of Christmas.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressDear listeners,What makes a Christmas song … a Christmas song? Sleigh bells? Yuletide imagery? A certain indefinable, know-it-when-you-hear-it sense of reverence and good cheer?My personal standard might sound a bit humbuggy: To me, a true Christmas song is one that I would not want to hear any month other than December. Even a song as brilliant and beloved as “All I Want for Christmas Is You” loses some of its power in March or August. With all due respect to Mariah Carey, please wait until all the Thanksgiving leftovers have been consumed.But what about those cuspy, sort-of-Christmas songs? Well, at least they’re fun to argue about. “River” by Joni Mitchell — which begins with a melancholic piano interpolation of “Jingle Bells” — might be the quintessential example, and I believe with all my heart that it’s not a Christmas song, not only because it’s about feeling unable to get into the holiday mood, but also because it passes my test: I can, and do, listen to it during any and all months of the year. (Plus, it’s perfectly sequenced on “Blue,” which is definitely not a seasonal album.) The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” on the other hand? Also a song I love, but one that I am only in the mood for one-twelfth of the year.Some songs really do have it both ways, though: Christmas-appropriate, but also perennially listenable. For today’s playlist, I’ve picked nine tracks that I’m calling Questionable Christmas Songs.Some tell stories that happen to take place around the holidays (“If We Make It Through December,” “’Tis the Damn Season”) and others have simply experienced a gradual shift in public perception so that, for some reason, people now consider them seasonally appropriate (“Holiday Road,” “Hallelujah,” “My Favorite Things”). All of them might be Christmas songs, depending on whom you ask, but they also might not be because I will not get mad if I hear any of them in April. Consider it my early gift to you: something to apolitically argue about at the holiday dinner table.Also, speaking of Christmas songs: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” officially hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100! If you read Friday’s Amplifier, you will understand how exciting this is — and you’ll be able to impress your friends by name-dropping a bunch of other great Brenda Lee songs. Congrats to Little Miss Dynamite!Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “If We Make It Through December”OK, this one might be a Christmas song because it appears on a Christmas album (“Merle Haggard’s Christmas Present”; please note the cover art), but Merle Haggard only decided to cut that album after the success of this stand-alone single — the biggest pop crossover hit of his entire career. There’s mention of gifts under the tree (or rather, a lack thereof), but the true subject of this melancholy tune is the plight of the down-and-out working man, meaning it is, first and foremost, a Merle Haggard song. (Listen on YouTube)2. Lindsey Buckingham: “Holiday Road”This delightful ditty was written for the 1983 film “National Lampoon’s Vacation” — not “Christmas Vacation.” But thanks to some version of the Mandela Effect, plus the fact that the word “holiday” is right there in the title, some confused people have started to insist that “Holiday Road” is a Christmas song. The country singer Chris Janson is vocal among them; he performed his cover of Lindsey Buckingham’s track on last year’s “Opry Country Christmas” broadcast, and he’s since released that cover with an extra festive lyric video. (Listen on YouTube)3. Fleet Foxes: “White Winter Hymnal”When a non-holiday song is suddenly reclassified in the cultural imagination as a holiday song, often, one must blame Pentatonix. On its popular holiday albums, the a cappella group has Christmas-ified such classics as “God Only Knows,” “Hallelujah” and, most recently and most puzzlingly, “Kiss From a Rose.” (We must resist this with all our might. We are not going to let Pentatonix convince us that “Kiss From a Rose” is a Christmas song.) The group’s version of this admittedly wintry 2008 Fleet Foxes tune appeared on “That’s Christmas to Me,” a 2014 Pentatonix album with an appropriately subjective title, but (can you tell?) I prefer the original. (Listen on YouTube)4. The Handsome Family: “So Much Wine”I have Phoebe Bridgers to thank for this one: It was her pick last year in her annual Christmas covers series. I’d never heard the original, and when I went back to check it out, I found that I actually preferred it to Bridgers’s more mournful rendition. Her version of this ballad of seasonal alcoholism is an out-and-out tear-jerker, but the Handsome Family manage to tell the same story with some dark comic relief. (Listen on YouTube)5. Taylor Swift: “’Tis the Damn Season”I believe it was my colleague Joe Coscarelli who, on an episode of Popcast, came up with one of my favorite Taylor Swift conspiracy theories: That “Evermore,” her second and decidedly more wintry 2020 album, was originally supposed to be a Christmas-themed release. This finely wrought ode to hometown what-ifs and temporarily rekindled romance is probably the strongest argument for that case. (Listen on YouTube)6. The 1975: “Wintering”Here’s another song about regressing at one’s parents’ house for a long weekend, a curiously season-specific track on the 1975’s excellent 2022 album “Being Funny in a Foreign Language.” I often appreciate the details in Matty Healy’s writing, and there are some particularly vivid ones here: a precocious, vegan sister; a fleece that doesn’t warm as well as advertised; a mother with a sore back who objects to being mentioned in the song. “I just came for the stuffing, not to argue about nothing,” Healy sings. “But mark my words, I’ll be home on the 23rd.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Barbra Streisand: “My Favorite Things”Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for the 1959 Broadway production “The Sound of Music,” “My Favorite Things” didn’t begin life as a holiday song. Julie Andrews performed it on a 1961 Christmas special, though, and since then its mentions of mittens, snowflakes and brown paper packages tied up with strings have made it sound at home on many a Christmas album — including Barbra Streisand’s. (Listen on YouTube)8. Leonard Cohen: “Hallelujah”Speaking of famous Jews singing are-they-really-Christmas songs, the endlessly over-covered, richly poetic, mordantly hilarious “Hallelujah” is in so many ways one of the most misunderstood songs in popular culture — so of course some people have turned it into a holiday standard. But as Stereogum’s Chris DeVille wrote in a 2019 essay, vehemently and correctly, “Whatever context it belongs in, Christmas ain’t it.” (Listen on YouTube)9. The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl: “Fairytale of New York”This is probably the only true Christmas song on the list, but it’s certainly an unconventional one — and of course I had to include it in honor of the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, who died last week. Over the weekend, Rob Tannenbaum (a journalist with a very appropriate name for this purpose) published a fascinating piece about the making of the song, and the push to send it to the top of the charts in the United Kingdom. Might “Fairytale” be the next Christmas song to belatedly hit No. 1? (Listen on YouTube)I get home on the 23rd,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“I’ll Have a Questionable Christmas” track listTrack 1: Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “If We Make It Through December”Track 2: Lindsey Buckingham, “Holiday Road”Track 3: Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”Track 4: The Handsome Family, “So Much Wine”Track 5: Taylor Swift, “‘Tis the Damn Season”Track 6: The 1975, “Wintering”Track 7: Barbra Streisand, “My Favorite Things”Track 8: Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”Track 9: The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York” More
The duet between the Pogues frontman and the singer Kirsty MacColl portrays lovers who turn viciously against one another on Christmas Eve.The competition to have the No. 1 chart single on Christmas Day in the United Kingdom is rabid; victory is sweet. Since November 1987, when the Pogues released “Fairytale of New York,” it’s been a recurring, if improbable, contender for the crown, but has never finished higher than second. A 2023 victory seems likely; after the Pogues singer Shane MacGowan died on Thursday, the British gambling company Ladbrokes changed its odds from 5-4 to a safe bet 1-4.“Fairytale of New York” is a duet between MacGowan and the British singer Kirsty MacColl, portraying lovers who turn viciously against each other on Christmas Eve. It’s “a drunken hymn for people with broken dreams and abandoned hopes,” Roison O’Connor wrote in The Independent. There’s misery, despair, drugs, booze and the kind of angry, cutting insults and slurs that could only come after years of marriage.“It’s a song about the underdog, and that’s a very British thing,” Steve Lillywhite, who produced the track, said in a video interview from his home in Bali. “All the other Christmas records compete against each other, whereas with ‘Fairytale,’ the only competition is itself.”Fittingly, “Fairytale of New York” began with a bit of marital conflict. Jem Finer, a founding member of the Pogues who played banjo and other instruments, told Irish Music Daily in an undated interview that he had written a song about a sailor who starts getting tearful on Christmas Eve. He proudly played it for his wife, the multimedia artist Marcia Farquhar, who was “disparaging” about the lyrics, he recalled. “Her main point was that it was sentimental twaddle.”“I was a bit put out, to be honest,” Finer admitted. He challenged her to suggest a better Christmas Eve scenario, and she proposed an unhappy family. (Finer declined an interview request. “I’m rather lost for words at the moment,” he said via email.)Finer worked on the song and gave it to MacGowan, who wrote the lyrics as a duet for male and female voices. Cait O’Riordan, who played bass in the Pogues, recalled that MacGowan wanted to sing it as a duet with a female studio engineer. “Shane was courting her,” O’Riordan said in a March 2023 interview with the national Irish broadcasting company RTÉ.When that didn’t work, Finer suggested O’Riordan, who also struggled to interpret the song. “I was trying to sing it like Ethel Merman,” she said. O’Riordan left the band and married Elvis Costello, who had produced the Pogues’ 1985 breakthrough album, “Rum Sodomy & the Lash.”The group thought about enlisting Chrissie Hynde of Pretenders. Then it began working with Lillywhite, a British producer who had made his name working with XTC, Peter Gabriel and U2. Frank Murray, who managed the Pogues, also managed MacColl, who was married to Lillywhite. Murray suggested MacColl as the duet partner, and Lillywhite recorded her vocals one weekend in the couple’s home studio.MacColl mastered not only the song’s unusual phrasing, in which MacGowan sings so far behind the beat he’s almost left behind, but the lyrics’ mix of bittersweet resignation and rage. “It’s a very nuanced way of singing. I spent a long time getting every note and rhythm right, for it to swing,” Lillywhite said. “Kirsty is perfect on it.” (She died in 2000; a recent boxed set collects her work.)In the song’s piano-and-voice introduction, MacGowan has been nicked for drunkenness, and his elderly cellmate sings the traditional Irish tune “The Rare Old Mountain Dew,” one of two songs-within-the-song. MacGowan begins to reminisce about a woman, with a slurred sense of optimism: “Happy Christmas, I love you, baby.” Then MacColl enters, and the two reminisce about the joyful start of their relationship as Irish immigrants in New York City.In the next verse, there’s a jump cut to the miserable present as the couple exchange insults, with MacColl ultimately announcing, “Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it’s our last.” It’s a small sign of songwriting savvy that MacGowan made the woman’s invective stronger than the man’s.The use of a gay slur in that section went largely unnoticed in 1987, but more recently, a few of the song’s epithets have been bleeped out by some broadcasters. In a 2018 statement, MacGowan explained that the words he used were true to the identity of the characters. “She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person,” he said, adding that he had no objection to having the lyrics bleeped.Finer’s music matches the complexity of the lyrics by using suspended chords and a switch to a minor key in the chorus (“The boys of the N.Y.P.D. Choir were singing ‘Galway Bay’”) to create tension and unease. In the last verse, MacGowan gently tries to reconcile with his lover. “You really don’t know what is going to happen to them. The ending is completely open,” he told The Guardian in 2012.There have even been covers of “Fairytale of New York,” including one by Jon Bon Jovi (“Terrible,” Lillywhite groaned). This holiday season, the brothers Jason and Travis Kelce, both N.F.L. stars, released a version with changed lyrics, “Fairytale of Philadelphia.” “The song gets to the roots of love, anger, resentment, sacrifice and ultimately companionship. It lays out what relationships really are, that they are something bigger than yourself,” Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles wrote in an email.MacGowan’s renown as a songwriter extends far past “Fairytale of New York,” but it does sum up his and the Pogues’ distinct mix of Celtic traditionalism and punk attitude. “There’s such a wide spectrum of emotions, expertly conveyed,” Daragh Lynch of Lankum, a Pogues-influenced Irish folk group, said via email. “It is beautiful, brutal, full of despair and hope.” The song, he added, “is one of the finest examples of songwriting in existence and will quite likely never be equaled.” More
