When you Google the phrase “sexiest Christmas song,” you find thousands of people opining on this subject, often with very good takes. I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue against, for example, the indisputable sexiness of Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” or Otis Redding’s “Merry Christmas Baby.”
But I have a different fave in this category which I’ll tell you about today: “That’s What I Want For Christmas” by SHeDAISY.
I first discovered SheDaisy (sorry, can’t bring myself to capitalize their name the stylized way they want me to, so the one above is the only one they’re getting) because my mom brought home their Christmas album Brand New Year from work. She was an entertainment reporter at the time, and CDs would often land on her desk that she thought I’d enjoy; this is how I discovered many of my favorite bands and artists around age 8–10. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with a holiday album put out by a trio of lady country singers from Utah… but then, falling in love is so often a surprise.
The whole album is fantastic, but for me “That’s What I Want” was always the standout. It has the retro charm of a 1960s lounge singer crooning love songs at a bar, replete with perfectly-attuned backup singers and a chill-ass band. The song was originally written by Earl Lawrence and performed by Nancy Wilson – beautifully, I might add – and her version is bittersweet. It begins, “When you said yesterday that it’s nearly Christmas/ What did I want?/ And I thought, ‘Just love me. Love me.’ That’s what I want for Christmas.” Nancy goes on like that, lilting and sort of sad, begging for love, never making it quite clear if she’s actually begging or just teasingly asking an already-won sweetheart for more love over the holidays. Since it was written in the ‘60s, it brings to mind a classic mid-century wife whose philandering husband, à la Jeff Sheldrake in The Apartment, never seems to be home when she needs him, and never seems emotionally present when he is. He’s still thinking about the checkout girl at the department store or his secretary at work or whoever his latest sweetest tart is. He’s not thinking about his wife, but she is almost always thinking about him.