My Fantasy Holiday Songs Playlist

My mom asked me recently, "If you could pick any artist to sing any holiday song, what would they be?" In so asking, she unwittingly sparked the internal debate of the week. After having spent a bit of time recently reflecting on the best and worst Christmas music one can hear, what about the best and worst one can imagine?

I took a stab at answering the question, and I've come up with ten fantasy scenarios, brilliant and hideous alike. Welcome to my nightmare.

Dream: Frank Black covering Buck Owens' 1965 tune "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy." The twangy simplicity of the original is perfectly suited to the former Pixies guitarist's more recent Nashville bent, and this charming little ditty needs an injection of the rock energy and solid guitar work that characterizes Black's opus.

Nightmare: Lindsay Lohan covering "Santa Baby" is the kind of nightmare from which you awake still terrified that it might be true especially after that Marilyn-mimicking photo shoot. And thanks to her vocal performance in the 2006 commercial bomb A Prairie Home Companion (as a fan of the radio show, I'm still hoping this film's a sleeper), we can imagine exactly what her rendition would sound like.

Dream: Sir Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" needs redemption. A long-suffering standard since 1979, this light synth-puff still holds a place in my heart, and who could remake it better than LCD Soundsystem? It's a case of stripping the corny-cheesy elements from something that could be really fun and cool.

Dream: The Cure getting into "Jingle Bell Rock" and making it cool again in a New Wavey kind of way. The melodic line would be especially interesting in Robert Smith's hands.

Nightmare: Jack White, either as part of the White Stripes of the Raconteurs (but particularly the latter), taking on that once-novel novelty "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Can't you just hear it now, in you head like? Bloody frightening is what it is.

Dream: Jewel taking a crack at "Blue Christmas" just might bring what could be a lovely song back through decades of country western abuse to a sincere and straightforward epitome. Maybe. My mom thinks so.

Nightmare: Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes breaking his heart through the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas, Darling." This version would belong to the tortured soul of every skinny-pants-wearing 14-year-old exiled to a family holiday more than an area code away from his girlfriend.

Dream: The Cardigans' taking and remaking Brenda Lee's exhausted "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." After hearing what the Swedish, girl-fronted group did with Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," I have faith that they could transform this classic's saccharine cultural overtones to genuine sweetness.

Nightmare: Twisted Sister going balls-deep on "O Come All Ye Faithful." Oh, wait. That happened. And the waking nightmare is as garish as anything you could have imagined.

Dream: "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" covered by Guns N' Roses (the Spaghetti Incident? version consisting of Axl and Slash and the gang, not the Chinese Democracy version consisting of Axl and Friends). Considering what they did with golden oldie "Since I Don't Have You," I think the band would have a hit with this song taken at a similar tempo. I can just head Slash noodling through a chromatic solo around the already complex melodic lines in this tune, and in my mind, it sounds pretty damn good.

Dream: Metal humorist and Tenacious D frontman Jack Black's idiom is perfectly suited to Danny Elfman's "What's This?" from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. A Tenacious treatment would add big guitars and a metallicious, hard-rocking depth to the rapid-fire vocal line, which Black would doubtless execute with his accustomed goofy-but-intense panahce. And can you imagine a Kyle Gass guitar solo on the well-known riff? It's a metal Christmas masterpiece waiting to happen. As Jack Skellington would have it, "Inspired!"

Dream/Nightmare: Günther and the Sunshine Girls have long held me in thrall with their oversexed, seasonal, poptastic "hits." And a big part of me wants to know how they would treat the you-can't-rape-the-willing 1948 classic, "Baby, It's Cold Outside," most recently mangled by Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. With a techno treatment and a good mustache, anything could happen. And that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

Ultimate Dream: If I could hear Led Zeppelin do "Fairytale of New York", I think I could die happy. Given the original song's Celtic, folk-punk beauty and perfectly placed tempo changes, considered along with Zep's legenday arrangement and execution ability, I can't imagine a lovelier holiday track. And with her shining performance on the album Raising Sand, recorded with Robert Plant and released in 2008, Alison Kraus wouldn't be too shabby in the female vocal part. It be thoughts such as these that make me regret I do not rule the musical universe.

Feel free to post your own holiday fantasy music singles in the comments section!