The Greatest Holiday Classics

A Holiday is a celebration by itself. It is the best means to render oneself stress-free. Music is the other synonym of celebration and de-stress. So, when the Holiday theme and Music combine ,we have two of the greatest compositions of all time.

Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday" is an evergreen song that was first released in 26 March 1979 by Hansa Records (FRG).It is one of those rare holiday songs that is universal in its concept. It was rendered in 1979 as a single by Boney M. The song was conceived as an adaption of the nursery rhyme Polly Wolly Doodle . Hooray! is a fusion of Disco and Reggae, and was penned by lyricists Frank Farian and Fred Jay. A huge hit all over Europe,it peaked at #3.It broke Boney M's row of 7 successive German #1 singles and peaked at #4, The B-side of the song "Ribbons of Blue" was borrowed from the motion picture Disco Fever. The song has been revived time again by bands like the Spanish group Parchís and The Cheeky Girls. Ricky Martin did a Spanish rendition of the same in his album Me Amarás (1993) . Alexandra Burke with her #1 hit single ""Start Without You",sampled this classic.

Holiday is a creation by the Pop Queen herself in her self-titled album Madonna. It wasfirst releasedinher debut albumon September 7, 1983 under the label of Sire Records. It belongs to the genre dance-pop. Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens (Pure Energy )were the lyricist-duo of this classic hit that later went on to feature in the 1990 greatest hits collection The Immaculate Collection. It also features in the 2009 classic hits album Celebration. The song has been unanimously hailed by critics. It holds the distinction of being Madonna's first hit single and entered top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100,and danced its way to top of the dance charts. "Holiday" was later on redubbed in dub and groove modes for the remix collection You Can Dance (1987).

"Holiday" from the album Madonna includes the B-side "I Know It", and fuses guitar- instrumentations, electronic handclaps coupled with synthesized string arrangement. Different versions of the song exist as they pertain to different recording performances of the diva. Sitcoms like Will & Grace have featured it on their soundtrack. In a period spanning from 1983 till 2009, Madonna has performed "Holiday" on all of her major world tours that include The Virgin Tour, Blond Ambition, Who's That Girl, ,The Girlie Show, Re-Invention, Drowned World and Sticky & Sweet . Madonna confesses on an interview with CBS News that "Holiday" was her all-time favourite among the corpus of her compositions. Author Rikky Rooksby in The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna claims that "'Holiday' was as infectious as the plague. One listen and you could not get the damn hook out of your mind."

• Clerk, Carol (2002), Madonnastyle, Omnibus Press, ISBN 0711988749

• Cross, Mary (2007), Madonna: A Biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0313338116

• Rooksby, Rikky (2004), The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna, Omnibus Press, ISBN 0-7119-9883-3
• http://www.musiclange.com
• http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/boney_m_