Earworms: Feels Like Christmas by Cyndi Lauper

Great Christmas songs don't have to be obvious

I seriously doubt if Cyndi Lauper and/or her Hooters songwriting partners Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman set out to write a holiday classic. “Feels Like Christmas,” however, turned out to be an essential part of my Decembers in every year since it was first released on the album Hat Full of Stars back in 1993.

Knowing as I do the ways of songwriting teams, I bet one of the three had come up with that title and maybe the ridiculously catchy chorus. Rather than doing the obvious, and trying to string together the typical run of yuletide phrases that turn up in so many mediocre Christmas songs, somebody had the bright idea to make this a love song to a guy named Louie. The name Louie, which could be attached to virtually any male figure in the English-speaking world (or with an accent, in the French), conjures up a particular image of a Brooklyn guy in a wife-beater t-shirt. It’s all about Lauper’s voice, which even when she sings has a trace of the accent of her New York upbringing. At any rate, she clips the sound of his name in such a split second that it took me years to even figure out that’s who she’s singing about.

Now, Louie is Cyndi’s sweetie, and he’ll stay that way as long as he’s a good provider. Second verse we learn that he would still be her man even if they had no money. The third verse is my favorite. “Hey Louie, life is sweet / I can’t be bitter / When you’re here with me.” This is not a happy ending love affair, it’s one that lasts through all the good and bad in life. “It doesn’t matter tit for tat / ‘Cause what you give / You get it back. / It don’t matter anymore / When love is knocking at your door.” The verses are sung to a melody that’s half nursery rhyme, half spoken word, over the strums of whatever stringed instrument the Hooter is playing, and the reedy tone of the melodica. Junior Vazquez, who co-produced the album, throws in some early 90s heavy syncopated drum beats behind it, too.

Ah, but the glory comes on the chorus, which takes up more than half the record. “It feels like Christmas / Just like Christmas / It feels like Christmas / With you.” We all know what she’s talking about. It’s the way Christmas feels to a child, eagerly awaiting the day, waking up as early as possible, and running to that tree to see an array of gifts. It’s that moment, not even the one that happens as the gifts are opened and thank yous are passed back, but the one that is the height of possibility and excitement. Cyndi Lauper conjures that moment every single time she sings those lines, which is even better because it gets repeated multiple times. That’s how strong her love is for Louie. It’s Christmas strong.

I do have one complaint about this record. The first verse, after some strumming and melodica introduction, is buried in some lo-fi ambience that is supposed to make the record sound more exciting when the full lush mix of hi-fi stereo takes over. Instead, it makes me strain to hear the beginning of a terrific song, and wish that the whole record could sound as good as it mostly does.

Since “Feels Like Christmas” is obviously a love song using the joyous peak of the holiday as a simile for the relationship at hand, it technically doesn’t qualify as a seasonal song for Christmas. But, everybody knows that by the transitive property, similes work both ways, so every December, this song becomes about the way Christmas is as wonderful as love. Lauper herself realized this five years after Hat Full of Stars failed to chart. She released Merry Christmas . . . Have a Nice Life, and included the same recording of “Feels Like Christmas” in between lesser originals and her takes on the likes of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Silent Night.”

Honestly though, as much as I love Cyndi Lauper as a singer, that album is not among her finest. Especially since it contains such a glorious song in the middle of it, the lack of strong original songs and the lackluster arrangements trying too hard to be different makes it less fun to experience in toto than you’d think. Much better was Lauper’s 2008 team-up with the Hives, “A Christmas Duel.” Lauper and Pelle Almqvist of the great Swedish garage rock band, take turns reciting which members of the other’s family they’ve had sex with before she admits she set his record collection on fire. “Who the fuck anyway wants a Christmas tree?” they ask. This is not the same spirit as “Feels Like Christmas”; instead it ups the ante on the Pogues with Kirsty MacColl’s classic “Fairy Tale of New York,” and lets us rejoice in a couple clearly made for each other because they’re both so terrible. And it rocks while almost recalling Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You. It’s equally a vital part of my annual holiday celebration.