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Rockin' Bethlehem is a 1989 compilation album. It had 14 Christmas songs recorded by independent Australian bands. The songs are mostly original while others are well known Christmas carols. It was created by Timberyard Records to support the Camperdown Children's Hospital. [1] It received a 1990 ARIA Award nomination for Best Independent Release.
Amy Lee Grant is an American singer, songwriter, musician, author and media personality. She is known for performing contemporary Christian music (CCM) and for a successful crossover to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as "The Queen of Christian Pop".
Band Aid was a charity supergroup featuring mainly British and Irish musicians and recording artists. It was founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia by releasing the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the Christmas market that year. On 25 November 1984, the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, and was released in the UK on Monday 3 December. The single surpassed the hopes of the producers to become the Christmas number one on that release. Three subsequent re-recordings of the song to raise further money for charity also topped the charts, first the Band Aid II version in 1989 and the Band Aid 20 version in 2004 and finally the Band Aid 30 version in 2014. The original was produced by Midge Ure. The 12" version was mixed by Trevor Horn.
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music normally performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or in the case of many carols or songs may employ lyrics whose subject matter ranges from the nativity of Jesus Christ, to gift-giving and merrymaking, to cultural figures such as Santa Claus, among other topics. Performances of Christmas music at public concerts, in churches, at shopping malls, on city streets, and in private gatherings is an integral staple of the Christmas holiday in many cultures across the world.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a song written in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in reaction to television reports of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. It was first recorded in a single day on 25 November 1984 by Band Aid, a supergroup put together by Geldof and Ure and consisting mainly of the biggest British and Irish musical acts at the time. The single was released in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1984 and aided by considerable publicity it entered the UK Singles Chart at number one and stayed there for five weeks, becoming the Christmas number one of 1984. The record became the fastest selling single in UK chart history, selling a million copies in the first week alone and passing three million sales on the last day of 1984, on the way to displacing Wings's "Mull of Kintyre" as the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK. It held this title until 1997 when it was overtaken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997", released in tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales following her death. The original version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has sold 3.8 million copies in the UK to date. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted sixth on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.
"Jingle Bells" is one of the best-known and commonly sung American songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and published under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857. It has been claimed that it was originally written to be sung by a Sunday school choir; however, historians dispute this, stating that it was much too "racy" to be sung by a children's church choir in the days it was written.
Geoff Moore is an American contemporary Christian music artist and songwriter. He began recording as a solo artist in 1984. In 1987, he formed Geoff Moore and The Distance, his touring band, which released eight albums generating a string of No. 1 radio hits throughout their 10+ year tenure. In 1998, Geoff retired the band from full-time touring. After a "farewell tour", Moore has continued as a solo artist, releasing eight more records between 1999 and 2015. The Next Thing was released in April 2016, making it his 25th album to date.
"Frosty the Snowman" is a popular Christmas song written by Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson, and first recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950 and later recorded by Jimmy Durante. It was written after the success of Autry's recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" the previous year; Rollins and Nelson shipped the new song to Autry, who recorded "Frosty" in search of another seasonal hit. Like "Rudolph", "Frosty" was subsequently adapted to other media including a popular television special by Rankin/Bass Productions, Frosty the Snowman. The ancillary rights to Frosty are owned by Warner Bros., but due to the prominence of the Rankin/Bass TV special itself, merchandising of the character is generally licensed in tandem with that special's current owners, DreamWorks Classics.
"The Little Drummer Boy" is a popular Christmas song written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1940. First recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale; the Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years and the song has been recorded many times since.
Riki Michele is a female Christian alternative rock artist. Best known as one of the vocalists for Adam Again, she has also recorded four eclectic solo albums.
Children's music or kids' music is music composed and performed for children. In European-influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Children's music has historically held both entertainment and educational functions. Children's music is often designed to provide an entertaining means of teaching children about their culture, other cultures, good behavior, facts and skills. Many are folk songs, but there is a whole genre of educational music that has become increasingly popular.
"Walking in the Air" is a song written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs' 1978 children's book The Snowman. The song forms the centrepiece of The Snowman, which has become a seasonal favourite on British and Finnish television. The story relates the fleeting adventures of a young boy and a snowman who has come to life. In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman fly to the North Pole. "Walking in the Air" is the theme for the journey. They attend a party of snowmen, at which the boy seems to be the only human until they meet Father Christmas with his reindeer, and the boy is given a scarf with a snowman pattern. In the film, the song was performed by St Paul's Cathedral choirboy Peter Auty, and reissued in 1985 and 1987.
"The Christmas Song" is a classic Christmas song written in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé.
"White Christmas" is a 1942 Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. The version sung by Bing Crosby is the world's best-selling single with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. When the figures for other versions of the song are added to Crosby's, sales of the song exceed 100 million.
José "Joe" Mari Lim Chan is a Filipino singer, songwriter and businessman in the sugar industry. He is currently chairman and CEO of Binalbagan Isabela Sugar Company, Inc. (BISCOM) and A. Chan Sugar Corporation. He is also the chairman and president of Signature Music, Inc. Awarded in 1974 as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines. He received a Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry and The Metro Pop Foundation. Recipient of the first ever ABS-CBN "ELITE Platinum Award" in 2005 and a recipient of the 2006 Dr. Jose P Rizal Award For Excellence.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. The song, published in England in 1780 without music as a chant or rhyme, is thought to be French in origin. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. The tunes of collected versions vary. The standard tune now associated with it is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin, who introduced the familiar prolongation of the verse "five gold rings".
The Animals' Christmas is the sixth solo studio album and the first Christmas album by vocalist Art Garfunkel, released in December 1985 by Columbia Records. The album was written by Jimmy Webb and features vocals by Garfunkel, Amy Grant, and Wimbledon King's College Choir. The Animals' Christmas tells the story of the Nativity of Jesus from the perspective of the animals present. The album received positive reviews, with one writer calling it "one of the best Christmas albums of the '80s."
A Child's Christmas in Wales is a piece of prose by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas recorded by Thomas in 1952. Emerging from an earlier piece he wrote for BBC Radio, the work is an anecdotal reminiscence of a Christmas from the viewpoint of a young boy, portraying a nostalgic and simpler time. It is one of Thomas's most popular works.
"Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is a song by songwriter Johnny Marks based on the 1939 story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer published by the Montgomery Ward Company. Gene Autry's recording hit No. 1 on the U.S. charts the week of Christmas 1949.
"One Child" is a song by American singer and songwriter Mariah Carey from her second Christmas album/thirteenth studio album, Merry Christmas II You (2010). It was written and produced by Carey in collaboration with Broadway composer Marc Shaiman. Backed by a children's choir, the lyrics are about the birth of Jesus. "One Child" received a mixed to negative response from critics, many of whom disapproved of the overbearing sentiment. In the United States, the track peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Gospel Digital Chart, and on the lower regions of the South Korea international single's charts. Carey performed the song at the Christmas in Washington event in November 2010.