Why Home Alone is the Best Christmas Soundtrack Ever

so a month ago I had the completely original idea that's totally never been done before to start taking requests for videos from my patreon page and I did this because I wanted to give back to the people who financed my addiction and honestly I wasn't expecting so many people to bring up Christmas music which now that I think about it is kind of dumb because it's December and I imagine that everyone who goes outside is now getting bombarded with things like this and with all that and well since tis the season I figured now be a good time to talk about why home alone is the best Christmas soundtrack ever but that kind of begs the question what makes something sound like Christmas well the old joke I've always heard in the music industry is that you just add bells like I've heard it from everyone and there's one more major component that just always makes it Christmas bells because that's what Christmas is all about sleigh bells in everything which it's kind of true because actually this one time in college there is this guest composer who came in and gave a masterclass and halfway through one of his pieces he just threw in some bells and one of my buddies leaned over and whispered here's Santa but it's true if you add this instrument to basically anything it'll make it sound more like Christmas which is exactly what they did in die hard because die hard is a Christmas movie [Music] [Applause] but why is that not die hard the Bell thing well this instrument is called a jingle bell or a sleigh bell why well because jingle bells like the jingle bells was originally written by James Pierpont in 1857 in America which for America is basically ancient history and originally it wasn't called jingle bells it was called one-horse open sleigh and when you listen to the oldest recordings of it you can still hear those bells see the thing is that sleighs don't have brakes so you have to attach bells to them so people can hear you coming so that you don't cause any accidents now let's say that you're a kid who lives in a neighborhood where your mailman has to get around on a sleigh and you're waiting for some kind of important package to be delivered say oh I don't know like it's the holidays and you're waiting for a Christmas present then there might be some kind of holiday association with that sound who knows but as far as I've been able to figure out that's where the whole Bell thing comes from which of course you hear in many different iterations in home alone [Music] but if I wanted to go pass the whole Bell thing and had to nail it down to one hard and fast rule for writing Christmas music at least for me I think this secret to writing something that sounds like Christmas is nostalgia Christmas is a holiday for the kids the kids get the presents and Santa's got to work the midnight shift on the holidays if that isn't some kind of metaphor then I don't know what is but Christmas is always about the kids and when it isn't it's all about reminding you of your childhood just like the ones I used to know in fact I'm showing you a part of my childhood by going over this film which was of course scored by none other than the legendary John Williams yep that John Williams and if you're big Williams fan then you'll know how unusual it is to find one of his scores that contain so much music that he didn't write it's everywhere run Rudolph run please come home for Christmas rockin around the Christmas tree have yourself a merry little Christmas [Music] and my personal favorite white Christmas by the Drifters so on the surface it might look like Williams is trying to get a quick check before the holidays but believe it or not these are actually a super important part of this film see all these tunes were written in and around the 1950s which was a critical point in American history it was the post-world war two economic boom and the American middle-class kind of came to be it's basically when suburbia was born and Lyndsey Ellis has a great video outlining how nostalgic we are as a society for these years in particular as well as how these nostalgic cycles occur the nostalgic pendulum still moves and this year it swung hard to the 80s your fingers looking good just like in the 80s when we were fondly looking back to a sanitized version of the 50s and believe it or not there was a metric tonne of Christmas music and other Christmas media that came around during the 1950's a lot of the most popular Christmas songs the ones that have become timeless and that we put on again year after year were written in the 40s 50s and 60s I'm talking about songs like Jingle Bell Rock rockin around the Christmas tree white Christmas holly jolly Christmas and it's not just that rock and roll sound we also had classics like Frosty the Snowman Frosty was written during this time period and although the book came out a decade before the song Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer came out in 49 How the Grinch Stole Christmas was written in 57 It's a Wonderful Life came out in 46 and Miracle on 34th Street came out in 47 all these costs at Christmas songs and stories that have almost become tradition to watch around the holidays all came out during this time period like these songs ended up becoming so popular that they led to those stop-motion films by Rankin and bass bass bass but those old stop-motion films like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer Santa Claus is coming to town and frosty the wait I thought this was stop-motion I thought for us to do stop-motion Frosty was a cartoon oh this is gonna really mess with me anyway we had all those films and cartoon TV specials like How the Grinch Stole Christmas all come out right after this critical 1950s era but even in these movies and songs from the 50s there are links to an even older time Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was a book that originally came out in 1939 the song Santa Claus is coming to town was first released in 1934 and even though it's a Wonderful Life came out and was set in 1947 it begins with George Bailey's childhood which would have been during the 20s when he was 12 back in 1919 what I'm trying to say is that there's another nostalgic pocket here in and around the 30s with things like the book Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and the song Santa Claus is coming to town and even the nostalgic elements of It's a Wonderful Life and those people in turn would have probably been nostalgic for older more traditional music like oh I don't know maybe jingle bells so we have traditional Christmas music like jingle bells that would have been a static for people like George Bailey as a child who would have been around in the 30s with things like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is coming to town which in turn would have been assaulted for people in the 50s who would have ended up seeing the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer the book become a song as well as the introduction of Frosty the Snowman and dr. Seuss's book which would have then been nostalgic for people in the 80s which was technically when this film was released I mean it was the end of the 80s very very late 80s becoming some slack here what I'm trying to say is that by just including music from that nostalgic 1950s time period you're maintaining that nostalgic presence that you've seen a lot of Christmas music and that means that by just playing the Grinch in Miracle on 34th Street and it's a Wonderful Life on the televisions in the film it sets up this nostalgic foundation that helps the film feel like Christmas especially from a musical point of view like I personally can't have a Christmas unless I hear you have termites in your smile [Music] but that's all the music that Williams didn't write what about the music he did write what about this [Music] well if you can't tell that that's the Russian dance from The Nutcracker then I quit but the Nutcracker oh boy the Nutcracker the nutcrackers just it is such a weird story and I don't mean like a toy soldier that can break nuts with his teeth coming to life and fighting a bunch of mice like yeah that's a weird story but I'm talking about how it made it to the States like go ahead take a guess write it down see if you get it right like for starters I've met a lot of musicians who don't like the Nutcracker especially in the ivory towers of academia I mean I still love it I listen to it every year but someone who really didn't care for the Nutcracker was a guy by the name of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky who just so happens to be the guy who wrote the Nutcracker the opening night apparently bombed and everything I've ever read says that Tchaikovsky was much happier with Sleeping Beauty than the Nutcracker he apparently just really wasn't happy with how the Nutcracker turned out so how did something that originally tanked at the box-office that the composer himself wasn't a huge fan of end up being like the national anthem of Christmas well you guessed it World War two nutcrackers or specifically nutcrackers that look like dolls and toy soldiers came from Germany in the 17th century and were given as gifts and eventually that gift-giving tradition became associated with the Christmas season well American soldiers stationed in Germany during World War two ended up buying up a bunch of those Nutcracker dolls as souvenirs and in order to not have their families freak out and say thanks but sweet baby Jesus what on earth is this thing the soldiers would also end up getting a book by the name of the Nutcracker and the mouse King which was a story written by ETA Hoffmann which was then used as the script for Tchaikovsky's ballet and eventually that ballet made it over to the States and the rest is history but just like all of our other Christmas media it made it over to the States during that post World War two economic boom so kind of hijacked all those other nostalgic elements of Christmas from that era but the thing is and I can't stress this enough the Nutcracker is like the most popular thing ever to exist in all of America period and I'm really under selling it here American Ballet companies make half of their annual earnings just off of Nutcracker performances alone this ballet is so popular that it's almost single-handedly responsible for keeping ballet alive in America so when you want something to sound like Christmas there's really no better place to go than the Nutcracker so when you get here it makes total sense but one of my favorite scenes especially when it comes to Williams's score is when Kevin is in the church and ends up talking to old man Marley sidenote this scene actually has one of the coolest Easter eggs in all of the film scoring world so every time we see old man Marley up to this point we hear this [Music] this is the DeeZee ray it's an old Gregorian chant that's like a thousand years old and it's all about the end times and the day of wrath and stuff like that but composers have cited this piece of music for hundreds of years in their compositions whenever they wanted to represent death I think it's technically the most referenced piece of music in history for that very reason [Music] kill him [Music] so because Kevin's led to believe that old man Marley's like this serial killer we hear the D s array but here in the church after Kevin gets to sit down and talk to Marley the choir starts singing carol of the bells like that yeah I have a friend do that now which has the exact same notes as the D s ear a just in a different context exactly like what you see happening between Kevin and old man Marley in this scene it's really cool but right before that Williams does something really clever when Kevin first walks into the church we hear the choir singing o holy night a Christmas Carol [Music] but in between that and carol of the bells we here this place to be the feeling bad about yourself it is I think so this is Star of Bethlehem a Carol that Williams wrote specifically for this film and he uses a version of it without lyrics throughout the film mostly during more tense scenes [Music] but by sandwiching that Carol in between oh holy night and Carol the Belles your brain isn't really trying to figure out if it's an original Christmas Carol or not based on the context which really lends a hand to make it fit within that Christmas carol repertoire and breaking Star of Bethlehem apart is really interesting like there are no hard and fast rules for Christmas carols they literally come from all over the planet over the course of thousands of years people literally write dissertations on the history of these kinds of songs but if I were to take a crack at it I think what makes this tune so interesting is because it has this Aeolian or natural minor kind of sound which as far as I know is kind of unusual for Christmas carols in my experience most aren't written in minor key signatures but if I'm not mistaken it's that natural minor sound that gives it that Church mode kind of quality and on top of that Williams uses something called a picker T third it's when you end a phrase on a major chord even though you're in a minor key signature and it's something that Bach used to do in all of his Corral's that were in a minor key which again gives that piece and older more religious vibe and when I was hunting around trying to figure this piece out that minor older sound kind of reminded me of God rest ye merry gentlemen [Music] after a little more digging I realized that at least to me it sort of sounds like this old Christmas hymn that basically has no information on it called Watchmen tell us of the night [Music] now but that might just be me all in all none of these individual elements will make something sound like a Christmas Carol but I do think that they lend themselves to sounding like older religious music which if the only time you listen to music like that is during the holidays then that can make it sound a little more Carolee to you but that's not the only original Christmas carol in this film there's actually a second theme which I consider to be the main theme to home alone called somewhere in my memory which was actually nominated for a Grammy for Best Original Song [Music] Merry Christmas sweetheart and just like Star of Bethlehem Williams wrote this just for this film and there's something about this tune in particular that got me there was something about it that was inexplicably Christmassy and I couldn't figure it out at first I thought that I just sounded like another Carol but I couldn't figure out why or which Carol specifically it reminded me of there was just something about it that sounded so familiar then I thought that kind of sounded like a slowed down version of welcome Christmas from the Grinch but [Music] that didn't quite fit and in trying to figure out what was up with this theme I stumbled upon this video from John Sargent's music channel which kind of reveals how Williams wrote this piece in case you missed it the melody to the main theme for home alone fits perfectly as a counter melody to the dance of the reed flutes from the Nutcracker and believe it or not there's actually some evidence that suggests that this might be how Williams writes some of his themes for example here's the force theme and Ray's theme from Star Wars [Music] but maybe this main theme sounded more like welcome Christmas to you or maybe it sounded more like an older traditional Carol or maybe now you can't not hear the Nutcracker but that's kind of the beauty of the music that Williams wrote for this film there may be points in this film or reminds you of a piece from The Nutcracker or others where it just sounds like an old traditional Carol but it's his ability to emulate those established Christmas sounds and styles and create something new without losing the original nostalgic feeling that makes this score so effective trying to maintain your balance while working off of a hundred years of established material that is all critical to the sound of Christmas while also trying to introduce your own voice is so insanely difficult to do but somehow Williams managed to pull it off so much Christmas music at least in my experience relies on a sense of collective nostalgia for an older time which makes trying to introduce new music to that repertoire really difficult so much of that Christmas sound relies on including those older nostalgic or even more traditional sounds because at some point we aren't watching films because they're nostalgic for us we watch them because they're nostalgic for our parents or our grandparents at which point it feels to me like they become tradition like think about it I would consider Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer to be traditional Christmas carols but those songs are younger than some of our grandparents so when you go through home alone and you see all those old nostalgic references to 1950s Christmas music or those old cartoons or those Christmas carols that you had to sing when you were a kid even though it's freezing outside you didn't want to or even just reminding you that whether you realize it or not yes The Nutcracker still exists it's the fact that this film managed to merge all these different Christmas sounds and styles together into a single enjoyable work all while Williams added his own flavor to the season that makes it so great and that is why home alone is the best Christmas soundtrack ever thanks for watching I like to thank my patrons making these videos possible with a very special thank you to Margaret Clark Haydn Elsa Donovan Hodges Andrew Luke F and Matt ether Unni karin rosa now claritin Billy Vazquez and Who am I I'm starting to see why credits typically scroll I'd also like to thank my patrons that requested this video and yes I am starting to take requests I'm not exactly sure how I'm gonna go about it this was kind of a test month we'll see how it goes but looking at what some people have already suggested it looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun be sure to follow me on Twitter and twitch and if you like it just out here check out my other video and if you really like what I'm doing consider supporting me on patreon but that's all I got for now thanks for watching thanks for a great year happy holidays and Merry Christmas

Channel: Sideways

Views: 301,262

Keywords: Home, Alone, Nostalgia, Christmas, John, Williams, Why Home Alone is the best Christmas Soundtrack Ever, Soundtrack, Nutcracker, Frosty, Snowman, Santa, Claus, Music Theory, Christmas Music, Rudolph, Red Nosed, Reindeer, Grinch, Home Alone, Dies Irae, Carol of the Bells, Church, Jingle Bells, Jingle, Bell, Bells

Id: jvQGGbq1MFE

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018