November 28, 2024 | 12:00am
White Christmas has made it to the era of K-Pop. The big music news this week is that V, one of those cute guys of BTS, is releasing a new version of White Christmas. This is no ordinary single. The recording has V in a duet with Bing Crosby, the American singer who originally recorded the song.
Talk about longevity, staying power, even immortality. Those are the qualities that great songs are made of. They come out , but instead of fading to oblivion, they stay and stay and stay on and on to become classics, listened to and loved by generations. And in the case of White Christmas, with V releasing this recording, it has now reached the era of K-Pop.
Now 82 years old, White Christmas was the first secular holiday song to become a big hit. It was composed by the Jewish Russian immigrant Irving Berlin, whose songs formed a huge part of America’s Tin Pan Alley during its early days. Think George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart and other music greats. Berlin, who never studied music, was among the best and the biggest. True Love, Always, Cheek to Cheek, God Bless America and other hits.
Berlin wrote White Christmas for Crosby to sing in the soundtrack of the movie “Holiday Inn,” which starred Crosby and Fred Astaire. Initially conceived as an incidental song, it proved irresistible to everybody dreaming of spending the Holidays with their loved ones amidst snow-covered landscapes during World War II.
Everybody fell in love with White Christmas and as a result, it later won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1943. The song expressed something that resonated with families coping with absences because of the war. Soldiers stationed in the battlefront were longing for the Christmases spent with their loved ones that they remember. They wanted the world to finally be at peace and to be back home safe with their families. That was everybody’s dream.
The song’s popularity was such that when “Holiday Inn” was remade as a big-budgeted musical in 1954, it was titled “White Christmas.” Crosby also starred armed with a new recording of the song alongside Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen.
This was also in spite of or despite the fact that White Christmas was a pop ballad and therefore not “holy” enough to be considered a Christmas carol. Think Silent Night, O Holy Night, The First Noel, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Hark the Herald Angels Sing and many others.
Thanks to White Christmas, we now have Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Blue Christmas, Jingle Bell Rock, The Christmas Song, Feliz Navidad, All I Want for Christmas is You, Grown-up Christmas List, even Christmas in our Hearts. Most of them are what would be described as secular but I say no less imbued with the Yuletide spirit of peace and goodwill for everyone.
As for V, who is still serving his mandatory enlistment in the South Korean Army, the PR blurb from the Interscope label says that Crosby is his favorite jazz singer and that he has listened countless times to Crosby’s recording of It’s Been a Long Long Time. He still has about a year to go in the service. After that, it will once more be full speed ahead for the boys of BTS.
Meanwhile, I think it is sweet of V to introduce Crosby’s groaning vocal style to his huge army. Then thanks to modern technology, he now has a duet with Der Bingle. This is aside of course from the fact that he has now joined the ranks of hundreds of singers all over the world who have recorded their own version of White Christmas. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Michael Bublé, Celine Dion, and even Eric Clapton and so on.
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