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    Mimi Hines, a Replacement Star in ‘Funny Girl,’ Dies at 91

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    She was best known as half of a comedy team with her husband, Phil Ford, until her hall-filling voice earned her raves in a role made famous by Barbra Streisand.Mimi Hines, a powerful singer and live-wire comedian who etched her name in Broadway lore as the replacement for Barbra Streisand in the original production of “Funny Girl,” died on Oct. 21 at her home in Las Vegas. She was 91.Her death was confirmed by her lawyer and friend Mark Sendroff.A “mischievous sprite,” as The New York Times once called her, the diminutive Ms. Hines brought an outsize energy to her work, whether she was dishing out one-liners in nightclubs as half of a comedy-and-song duo, Ford & Hines, with her husband, Phil Ford, or delivering showstopping numbers to packed houses on Broadway.During her peak in the 1950s and ’60s, journalists often noted her elfin quality and her distinctive facial features — cleft chin, deep dimples and wide, toothy grin — which she was not shy about using as a comic prop.When Mike Wallace interviewed her and Mr. Ford in 1961, he informed her that a newspaper writer had recently described her as “two buck teeth and a carload of talent.”“That’s not true,” she responded. “My whole mouth is buck.”Ms. Hines and Mr. Ford got their first big break in 1958 on “The Tonight Show,” which at the time was hosted by Jack Paar. It was the first of several “Tonight” appearances they would make over the years. Her rendition of the song “Till There Was You” from “The Music Man” moved Mr. Paar to tears.“It was a magic night on TV,” Ms. Hines said in a 1963 interview with The Prince Herald Daily Tribune of Saskatchewan. “They say 12 million people saw it.” They also appeared on several episodes of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” as well as on many other variety and talk shows.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is It Too Late Now to Say Sorry? 8 Songs for the High Holy Days.

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      Apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match.Bob DylanFiona Adams/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,As Lindsay mentioned on Friday, she’s out on book leave for the rest of the month. Starting next week, a series of knowledgeable Times staffers will sub in to provide thoughtfully curated playlists each Tuesday. This week, however, you are stuck with me: a reporter on the Culture desk who has written about Dylan and the Dead, and whose current Spotify rotation includes CoComelon’s “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Encanto” soundtrack (possibly Lin-Manuel Miranda’s finest work).For some of us, this is a week of reflection, repentance and weaning ourselves off caffeine: It’s the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night. There are more superficially appealing holidays; Yom Kippur in particular is a fast day and is not supposed to be “fun.” But I earnestly don’t know what I would do without this time of year and the space it provides to pause and take stock. You don’t need to belong to any particular faith to find that a useful exercise.A High Holiday playlist might appear a tricky proposition. Popular music is not typically a space for solemnity and self-denial. On Yom Kippur itself, sex and nonessential drugs, to say nothing of rock ’n’ roll, are prohibited. But apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match. While we cannot skimp on some of the most obvious artists — hello, Barbra; nice to see you, Leonard — we are also including Stevie Wonder and Outkast.I hope you reflect and enjoy. And, if you celebrate, have a sweet new year and a meaningful fast.Gut yontif,MarcListen along while you read.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sympathy for the Diva: Why We Love ‘Difficult’ Stars

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      A new Faye Dunaway documentary wants to turn us from gossips into cheerleaders.Before Faye Dunaway makes her big entrance, you hear her snap from off camera: “We need to shoot. I’m here now. Come on!” When we meet her inside her apartment, she’s using a piece of paper to fan herself with a petulance that’s reminiscent of Queen Charlotte from “Bridgerton.” This is the feisty opening to the HBO documentary “Faye,” and it doesn’t do much to dispel decades of rumors painting Dunaway as a temperamental diva. Difficult, erratic, vain, narcissistic: These descriptors have etched themselves into the reputations of many famous women, and they have also been countered in all sorts of media. Much like Barbra Streisand’s memoir, “My Name Is Barbra,” or the 2018 Grace Jones documentary, “Bloodlight and Bami,” one clear purpose of “Faye” is rebuttal: to let Dunaway reconstruct the narrative.Like many in my generation, I first saw Dunaway in “Mommie Dearest,” the 1981 film — either a disaster or a masterpiece, depending on whom you ask and their tolerance for camp — in which she played another supposed she-devil: Joan Crawford, whom the movie depicts as an abusive mother and a fame-hungry prima donna. Unlike Roger Ebert, who called it “one of the most depressing films in a long time,” I was transfixed by “Mommie Dearest.” I couldn’t get enough of Dunaway’s shellacked eyebrows, the murderous rose-garden scene, the “no more wire hangers” theatrics. There’s an entire age cohort whose sense of Dunaway is all scrambled up in this role. Instead of meeting her via classics like “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Chinatown” and “Network,” we met her as Crawford, berating everyone in her path. As Dunaway says in a 1984 interview clip shown in the new documentary, “There’s an inevitable tendency of people who both work in the industry and the audience to associate, to think you’re like the parts you play.”If you’re not up on the reputation that Dunaway now has to dispute, a quick scroll through Reddit threads about her should get you up to speed. There are first-person accounts, too, many of which appear in HBO’s documentary. In one clip, Johnny Carson asks Bette Davis — rumored to be a bit of a harpy herself — to name the most difficult person she ever worked with; Davis, looking prim in a white bucket hat, shoots back, “One million dollars, Faye Dunaway,” to great laughter. In a clip that’s not shown in the documentary, Brenda Vaccaro, who worked alongside Dunaway in the 1984 movie “Supergirl,” says that Dunaway “would terrify people” — though she also calls her a “brilliant actress” and adds that “you can see the struggle.”“Faye” uses a mix of straight-to-camera interviews, family photos, archival footage and plenty of film clips to humanize little Dorothy Faye, a girl from Bascom, Fla., who quickly achieved Hollywood-icon status. It also dwells on that “struggle” part and enlists talking heads to spring to Dunaway’s defense. We learn about her alcohol dependency and her late-in-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder, both of which Dunaway finally sought treatment for after years of unexplained mood swings, depression and erratic behavior. Sharon Stone, Dunaway’s chum and mentee, talks about the intense pressure on actresses to be thin and says that Dunaway has only ever been kind and generous to her. She becomes fiercely protective when the subject of “Mommie Dearest” comes up: “Everybody wants to make fun of her for ‘Mommie Dearest,’ but you tell me how you play that part,” she says. “The joke is on the director, the joke is not on the artist.”At each stage, we the audience have our own parts to play: fans, bullies, executioners, cheerleaders, allies.Mickey Rourke — whose own reputation isn’t exactly untarnished — starred in “Barfly” with Dunaway. He was, he says, “in awe of her and kind of a little intimidated.” He attempts to soften Dunaway’s image, but that task becomes complicated when people like Howard Koch come along to share their experiences. Koch was first assistant director on the set of “Chinatown.” In his first phone call to Dunaway, he says, she guessed that he was a Sagittarius, then informed him that this astrological offense meant they would never get along. He then dishes about Dunaway’s demanding that Blistex be applied to her lips before every take. Jack Nicholson, we learn, had a loving nickname for her on the set: “Dread.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee and Other Stars Endorse Harris

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      Barbra Streisand lent her support to Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, becoming the latest in a series of high-profile stars and celebrities who have coalesced around her candidacy since President Biden endorsed her as his successor.“President Biden and Vice President Harris ushered this nation out of the Trump chaos,” she said in a statement to The New York Times on Monday. “I’m so grateful to President Biden and so excited to support Kamala Harris. She will work to restore women’s reproductive freedom and continue with the accomplishments begun in the Biden-Harris administration.”Ms. Streisand praised Mr. Biden as “an honorable and compassionate leader” and called former President Donald J. Trump “a convicted felon” and a “pathological liar” who had been found liable for sexual assault and who had “incited an insurrection against our democracy.”Endorsements from Hollywood’s most recognizable figures can add cultural cache to candidates, and have traditionally helped campaigns raise money, turn out crowds at rallies and generate excitement on social media. Some campaigns have been leery of appearing too close to celebrities, fearing accusations of elitism. Both parties seek them; at the Republican National Convention last week, Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and Dana White were among the celebrities supporting Mr. Trump.Since Mr. Biden announced he would not seek re-election, some stars have praised his decision, others have gotten behind Ms. Harris, and a few who made their views known earlier in the cycle have stayed quiet. Here’s a look at where some notable names in Hollywood now stand:George ClooneyMr. Clooney’s essay in The New York Times this month calling on Mr. Biden to not seek re-election rattled the Biden team and dealt a highly visible blow to the campaign at a particularly vulnerable moment, underscoring the power that stars can wield.A spokesman for Mr. Clooney said on Monday that the actor was not commenting on the latest developments in the race.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      25 Biggest Oscar Snubs of All Time

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      Every year since the Academy Awards were invented, somebody has been overlooked, ignored, passed over, disregarded or brushed off. You know what they say about beauty and beholders.But perceived Oscar omissions — snubs, as we have come to call them — have grown into a frenzied annual conversation, with people left off the nomination list, or nominated but denied a statuette, sometimes receiving as much attention, or more, as those who win.These are the 25 true snubs and unjust losses that Times film critics, columnists, writers and editors still can’t get over. Read more →‘Do the Right Thing’ for Best Picture (1990)Actual winner: “Driving Miss Daisy”Spike Lee and Danny Aiello in the Brooklyn-set drama.Universal PicturesSome people hated this movie. Others, more ominously, feared it, or claimed to. News articles and reviews imagined riots sprouting in its wake (they never came), seeing in the character of Mookie — who, in a fit of righteous fury, smashes a pizzeria window in the film’s famous climax — confirmation of Lee’s insidious intent. Did academy voters have similar misgivings? Lee, who was shut out of the directing category, did receive a nomination for his screenplay, suggesting at least one branch of the organization had his back. (Danny Aiello was also nominated for supporting actor.) But it’s hard to look at the eventual best picture winner, “Driving Miss Daisy” — a film in which Morgan Freeman plays Hoke Colburn, the patient chauffeur of a bigoted, elderly white woman — and not see a statement of preference. In 1990, it was the Hoke Colburns of the world, not the Mookies, who were welcome on the academy’s biggest stage. REGGIE UGWU, pop culture reporterWe 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      10 Great Oscar Winners for Best Original Song

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      Hear tracks by Billie Eilish, Keith Carradine, Isaac Hayes and more.Billie Eilish, a potential two-time Oscar winner. (We’ll find out Sunday night!)Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,Happy Oscar week! The 96th Academy Awards are this Sunday, and you know which competition we’re most excited about here at The Amplifier: best original song. Today’s playlist is a brief but star-studded tour through the category’s history.First awarded at the seventh annual ceremony, best original song has long been a reflection of popular music’s evolving style — the rare honor that’s been won by both Irving Berlin and Eminem. As the two-time winner Elton John can attest, it can be a sure path to an EGOT. As the veteran songwriter Diane Warren, who has been nominated 15 times but never won, might tell you, it can also be maddening.Warren is nominated again this year for Becky G’s “The Fire Inside,” written for Eva Longoria’s directorial feature debut, “Flamin’ Hot,” but she’s got stiff competition from the year’s most commercially successful movie, “Barbie.” (Heard of it?) That film boasts the highest-profile contenders: Ryan Gosling’s theatrical showstopper “I’m Just Ken” (penned by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt) and Billie Eilish’s wispy, haunting ballad “What Was I Made For?,” which last month won the Grammy for song of the year.Jon Batiste’s “It Never Went Away” or Scott George’s “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” could always upset if the “Barbie” songs split the vote, but my money’s on Eilish. “I’m Just Ken” is fun, sure, but in my humble, grouchy opinion, it overstays its welcome and contributes to an overall flaw of the film, which is that the supposed villain is far and away the most charismatic character. (I’m going to go hide now.)Eilish’s song is arresting and finely crafted; with all due respect to Warren, I think it’s the most worthy winner. And if you need another reason to root for the 22-year-old musician, a victory would make Eilish the youngest person ever to win two best original song Oscars, since she already won for her 2021 Bond theme, “No Time to Die.” (Her 26-year-old brother, Finneas, with whom she co-wrote both songs, would become the second-youngest two-time winner.)Today’s playlist is a reminder of some past best original song winners and a testament to the category’s stylistic diversity. Is it the first mix to contain both Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were” and Three 6 Mafia’s “Hard Out Here for a Pimp”? It’s certainly the first Amplifier playlist to do so.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch the 2024 SAG Awards: Date, Time and Streaming

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      The awards, which are streaming live on Netflix for the first time, will offer a preview of some key Oscars races. Barbra Streisand will be on hand, too.Cord-cutters rejoice: Normally, watching an awards show involves subscribing to a live TV service (or remembering which of your email addresses you haven’t already used for a free trial).But on Saturday, for the first time, Netflix will be streaming the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, potentially bringing them to a much wider audience.The 15 awards, which are voted on by actors and other performers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, honor the best film and television performances from the past year. They can be a bellwether for the Oscars, happening this year on March 10. (Since 1996, 83 of the 112 stars and films that won Oscars for best picture or acting first won a SAG Award.)This year’s ceremony is shaping up to be a “Barbenheimer” rematch: The two summer blockbusters — “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb, and “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s unique spin on the Mattel doll — each picked up a pack-leading four nominations and will be competing for the guild’s top prize, best ensemble.There’s also intrigue in the best film actress race: Lily Gladstone, who plays an Osage woman married to a white man involved in a murderous conspiracy in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” has blazed a trail through awards season, taking home honors from the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. But Emma Stone, who plays a grown woman with the mind of a child in the “Frankenstein”-inspired black comedy “Poor Things,” came out on top at the BAFTAs and the Critics Choice Awards (and won her own Globe in the musical or comedy category).Now, on Saturday night, we’ll get our strongest indication yet as to which way academy voters are leaning. We’ll also get an appearance from Barbra Streisand. Here’s how to watch.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can’t Make It to Broadway? Book and Movie Ideas for Theater Lovers.

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      There are plenty of novels, memoirs, documentaries and livestreaming options sure to satiate fans of theater.A trip to the theater isn’t always possible, especially during the busy — and pricey — holiday season. When a craving for stage drama hits, fear not, there are options. In the world of literature, long-awaited memoirs by Barbra Streisand and Chita Rivera arrived this year, as did the first major biography of the playwright August Wilson. Whether you prefer a live capture of a popular Broadway show like “Waitress,” or a film adaptation of, say, “Dicks: The Musical,” an Upright Citizens Brigade sketch, there is an abundance of musical theater films. (And if all else fails, you can listen to our critics discuss two recent musical-theater highlights or hear the story of the success of “Wicked” from our theater reporter.) Here is a small selection of notable works of theater-related memoir, fiction and film.To ReadViking PressHarperOne‘My Name Is Barbra’Barbra Streisand’s memoir spans 970 pages of print and 48 hours via audiobook. But for an icon of her stature, whose personal life — her Brooklyn upbringing, her celeb lovers, her underdog charm, that famous nose — is almost as mythic as her career, a page count exceeding that of “Ulysses” could be considered restraint. While it’s filled with chatty, personable retellings of stories that may be familiar to Streisand fans, there are plenty of fresh anecdotes too. Alexandra Jacobs called it “a banquet of a book” in her review in The New York Times and advised that “you might not have the appetite to linger for the whole thing, but you’ll find something worth a nosh.” Read the review.‘CHITA: A Memoir’The Broadway legend Chita Rivera wants to share the spotlight with her successors, and so, though her book is a memoir, Rivera kept the next generation in mind while writing it with the arts journalist Patrick Pacheco. In a conversation with Juan A. Ramírez in The Times, she said, “It’s not as much of a memoir as it is an opportunity for kids to realize that if they want this, they can have it — but they have to work hard.” That endless striving earned her three Tony Awards and led to her collaborations with the likes of John Kander and Fred Ebb, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse. Her drive shines in this book along with glimpses of snark from her “fire-breathing alter ego, Dolores.”‘August Wilson: A Life’If the seminal American playwright August Wilson were to read his own life story, written by the former Boston Globe theater critic Patti Hartigan, he would most likely do so in the back of a seedy diner, drinking coffee and chain smoking, as he often did. In the first major biography of the playwright, Hartigan chronicles Wilson’s prolific career — including his Pulitzer Prize-winning plays “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” — and his immeasurable influence on capturing the experiences of Black Americans in the 20th century.‘The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race’In the scholar Farah Karim-Cooper’s book about Shakespeare and racism, she posits that “love demands that we reconcile ourselves with flaws and limitations.” Karim-Cooper, a director of education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and a professor at King’s College London, applies this philosophy to the great playwright, scrutinizing his relationship with race and interrogating how his works shaped harmful Renaissance ideals — while still professing admiration. Pick it up for an expert perspective on a thorny theater subject, or to share a reading list with the prominent Shakespearean actor John Douglas Thompson, who reviewed the book for The Times.Tom LakeWe 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

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      They’re Great Songs. Are They Christmas Songs?

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      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