Wonderful Christmastime
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Wonderful Christmastime" | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Single by Paul McCartney | ||
| from the album 'Back to the Egg' | ||
| Released | 16 November 1979 | |
| Format | 7' | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Label | Parlophone/EMI | |
| Writer(s) | Paul McCartney | |
| Producer(s) | Paul McCartney | |
| Chart positions | ||
|
||
| Paul McCartney singles chronology | ||
| "Getting Closer" (1979) | "Wonderful Christmastime" (1979) | "Coming Up" (1980) |
Wonderful Christmastime is Paul McCartney's contribution to the world of holiday music. John Lennon and George Harrison had already released such numbers, and Ringo Starr made a Christmas album decades later. Of all of the former Beatle seasonal offerings, only Lennon's song has become a worldwide standard, though McCartney's song enjoys significant Christmastime popularity in the UK and the US. The notable synthesizer riff was played on a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5.
The song was later added as a bonus track on the CD reissue of Paul McCartney & Wings' Back to the Egg.
[edit] Trivia
In Japan, there have been numerous attempts to ban the "Wonderful Christmastime" due to the song being directly attributed to 143 separate cases of suicide. In 1987, one Osaka radio station reportedly played the track back-to-back for three days straight, in the lead up to Christmas. Tokyo Police Department reported 57 fatalities during the 1986-87 period alone. A Japanese government spokesman was popularly quoted as saying that "the syncopated synthesizer appears to send people scrambling for the fish knife."
