Guest
Daz Wright
Every ounce of his being is focussed on discussing video games, cats and the popular music of the day. He live in Moseley in Birmingham.
The Christmas season begins with Mark talking to Daz Wright of Moselele, about the best songs to ring in the festivities.
Daz is a musician, and a founder-member of the Birmingham-based ukulele group Moselele. He’s also a big fan of Christmas, and delivered a sack full of joy to the List Envy studio, along with an honest-to-goodness Christmas cracker and actual sleigh bells.
Whamageddon
The pair discuss this real-world survival game. Like many pure things, Whamageddon has been co-opted by the corporate world, so we’ll stick with the original rules rather than those imposed by the Bauer Media corporation, who have attempted to make it their thing recently.
- The object is to go as long as possible without hearing the original version of Wham!’s song Last Christmas (you won’t hear that version in this episode, so you’re safe).
- It runs from Dec 1st until Christmas eve.
- As soon as you recognise the song, that’s it, you’re out, and play resumes for you next year.
- If you’re deliberately sabotaged, bad luck, but that’s not the spirit of the game. You’re still out, but the saboteur is a dick.
Honourable mentions
- Mel Smith and Kim Wilde — Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Mike Oldfield — In Dulce Jubilo
- Pretenders — 2000 Miles
- Sia — Puppies are Forever
- The Wombles — Wombling Merry Christmas
- Bob Dylan — Must be Santa
- Eels — Everything’s Gonna be Cool This Christmas
- Garry Glitter — Another Rock ’n Roll Christmas
- Wizzard — I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday
Daz’s picks
In order of discussion:
This is, for Daz, a perfect Christmas song, as it falls into one of the main categories: nostalgia, a description of the Christmas day or event, and a shameless emotional trigger… and perhaps it embodies all three.
The Oasis cover Mark refers to was not done for the BBC’s Live Lounge series, but for the NME in a joint venture with the War Child charity.
Elton John — Step into Christmas
A late addition to Daz’s list, Step into Christmas is nothing if not meta, opening with the line “welcome to my Christmas song”. Daz calls it shameless, but you can be the judge.
You were promised that your ears would remain a Wham!-free zone, so the demonstrative track for this segment is brought to you by courtesy of the Crazy Frog (who still has 6.5 million YouTube subscribers). Daz enjoys that Last Christmas embodies the spirit of the day (as per his third category of Christmas song success).
Mariah Carey — All I Want for Christmas is You
Despite Daz describing Mariah’s voc