geoMp3 of The Week: Stephen Colbert’s “Cold, Cold Christmas”
This is going to be about as far as I can push this conceit before it loses all meaning. This week’s geoMp3 of The Week is, as promised, a cut from “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!”
First of all this special is great. The Feist thing was dumb, and all stoner comedy is a horrible bore (although Willie Nelson was given a very comely song), but overall the show was really good. Colbert has said several times lately (try the Fresh Air interview), that he wanted the show to be earnest and blustery, sincere and absurdist. And that fucker did it! With all the gags piled on (the cheezy cross fades and sets, the retro stone-faced performances, the traditionalist thesis) just see if you don’t smile sincerely when Colbert, Nelson, Feist, Keith, Legend, and Costello do “What’s So Funny…?” And if you’re steeped in Colbert mythos, you’ll be shocked to see what he does to that bear (before George Wendt’s Santa is called upon to, well…you should watch this show). Although it should also be said that the Colbert character leaves a little of his truthin…no, his verisimilitude, behind. Would finger-wagging Colbert really approve of John Legend’s amoral croon, for example?
Well, maybe. Because ultimately Colbert argues here for an all-in to the spirit of the holiday more than anything else. Granted, he’d prefer you be on his side of each issue. And, granted, he takes a couple of swipes at haters and atheists and other scourges on his squeaky clean social structure. But ultimately he just wants Christmas back.
Anyway, this is getting longer than my undergraduate thesis on the cultural imperialism inherent to my corrido about Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Spanish conquistador and generally unsympathetic curmudgeon. So here’s what I’m doing: I’m posting the Soundtrack’s bonus, “A Cold, Cold Christmas,” performed very capably by Colbert himself. It’s another great aping of these older styles (listen to that slap-echo!) and it’s that rarest of novelties — a well-performed, beautiful song. In it, Colbert venomously blasts a former flame (Charlene? Probably not.), in fact wishing her Christmas is “a blustery landscape of pain.” So that’s where this track is going — the blustery landscape of pain called my hometown, to which I’ll be returning this week.
So it’s “A Cold, Cold Christmas,” from the A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!.
And the kml for all mp3s of the week.