holiday music
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Happy holidays, Pharbz. Phoebe Bridgers has released her annual holiday song cover, this time performing The Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine” and donating proceeds to the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
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The 28-year-old musician recorded and produced the track with longtime collaborators Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska, Marshall Vore, Harrison Whitford and Sebastian Steinberg, with Andrew Bird credited for contributing vocals, violin and whistling. Normal People star Paul Mescal, Bridgers’ boyfriend and rumored fiancé, is also featured on the song, first released by The Handsome Family on their 2000 album In The Air.
“Listen to me, Butterfly,” Bridgers sings on the cover, her fluttering voice supported by a mellow choir of male voices. “There’s only so much wine you can drink in one life.”
Following suit with the style of artwork used for the Grammy nominee’s past holiday recordings, the “So Much Wine” cover art features two minimalistic ghosts painted onto a portrait of snowy mountains and white-dusted evergreen trees. The “Motion Sickness” singer first started her tradition of releasing a yearly festive single in 2017, when she covered “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
In the years since, Bridgers has dropped reimagined versions of Tom Waits’ “Day After Tomorrow,” Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “‘7 O’Clock News/ Silent Night” with Fiona Apple and The National‘s Matt Berninger, and McCarthy Trenching’s “Christmas Song” with Jackson Browne. Every year, proceeds from her covers benefit organizations that serve communities in need like the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which assists lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and people living with HIV with treating substance abuse, housing, legal assistance, healthcare and more.
Listen to Phoebe Bridgers’ new cover of “So Much Wine” below.
Mariah Carey might be the “Queen of Christmas,” but a new legal ruling means she won’t be able to stop others from using the same name.
In a decision issued Tuesday, a tribunal at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected Carey’s application to register the royal title as a federal trademark. The decision went in favor of Elizabeth Chan, another singer who says she’s used the same name for years.
Chan filed a legal case against Carey in August, arguing that “Christmas is big enough for more than one Queen.” After that, Carey never responded to the case or defended her applications for the trademarks, prompting the Trademark Office to rule in favor of Chan by default.
“We are pleased with the victory, and delighted that we were able to help Elizabeth fight back against Carey’s overreaching trademark registrations,” said Tompros, an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale.
In the same statement, Chan herself added: “Christmas is a season of giving, not the season of taking, and it is wrong for an individual to attempt to own and monopolize a nickname like Queen of Christmas for the purposes of abject materialism.”
Carey’s attorney did not return a request for comment on the decision.
In a statement, Chan’s lawyer Louis Tompros called Carey’s efforts to secure legal protection over the “Queen” name “a classic case of trademark bullying” – a term used to criticize overly-aggressive trademark protection by big brands.
Likely playing on her perennial smash hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Carey’s company (Lotion LLC) applied last year to register the “Queen” name as an exclusive brand name for a variety of different goods and services, ranging from music to alcohol to fragrances.
Trademarks are different than copyrights, and they do not give someone blanket ownership over particular words. If Carey had won the registrations and wanted to sue someone, she still would have needed to prove that consumers had confused the two brand names – not always an easy task, particularly with a fairly unoriginal name like “Queen of Christmas.”
But such registrations are still important, and would have empowered Carey’s company to start threatening litigation and crowding out others from using it in similar commercial contexts. That potentially would include Chan, who calls her self “pop music’s only full-time Christmas singer” and says she’s also been repeatedly dubbed the “Queen of Christmas.”
The risk of such litigation prompted Chan to file her August case at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, a court-like body within the USPTO that decides disputes over who is entitled to register particular trademarks. Repped by Tompros, she argued that no single singer or company should be able to lock up the title.
“Ms. Carey can call herself whatever she wants, but she shouldn’t have the ability to block others from doing the same,” Tompros said at the time.
It’s unclear exactly what motivated Carey and her lawyers (from the elite trademark law firm Fross Zelnick) to file the applications, particularly after she gave an interview in December in which she seemed to disclaim the title: “To me, Mary is the Queen of Christmas.”
The dispute over the “Queen” title prompted some fun wrangling among other Christmas “queens.” Darlene Love jokingly urged Carey to “call my lawyer,” noting that David Letterman had “officially declared me the Queen of Christmas 29 years ago.” And just last week, Dolly Parton quickly conceded the title to Carey after an interviewer suggested that Parton might be “the new Queen of Christmas.”
“Now, don’t you say that! I’m not going to compete with Mariah,” Parton said in the interview with Better Homes and Gardens. “I love her. You think of Christmas, you think of Mariah.”
“Is it true that Mariah Carey trademarked ‘Queen of Christmas?’ What does that mean that I can’t use that title?” Love asked in the post. “At 81 years of age I’m NOT changing anything. I’ve been in the business for 52 years, have earned it and can still hit those notes! If Mariah has a problem call David or my lawyer!!”
Backstreet Boys debut at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart with the group’s first seasonal effort, A Very Backstreet Christmas. The set launches atop the list dated Oct. 29 with 20,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 20, according to Luminate.
Also bowing the Oct. 29-dated chart: Reba’s The Ultimate Christmas Collection (No. 14), the Country Christmas Greatest Hits compilation (No. 24), Selah’s At This Table: A Christmas Album (No. 26), the Now That’s What I Call a Wonderful Christmas compilation (No. 31) and Jim Brickman’s A Very Merry Christmas (No. 32).
The seasonal Top Holiday Albums chart returned to Billboard’s weekly chart menu for the current season with the Oct. 22-dated chart. That week, the top debut was Lindsey Stirling’s Snow Waltz at No. 2, while the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas spent a 12th nonconsecutive week atop the list. Top Holiday Albums will continue to be published on a weekly basis through January of 2023, when it will dash away until the next holiday season. (The chart generally returns every October.)
The Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each units equals one album sales, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
The Oct. 29-dated Top Holiday Albums chart is populated by festive favorites that have decorated the chart through the years, including Michael Bublé’s Christmas, Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas, Josh Groban’s Noel, Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas (the survey’s all-time top title) and Carrie Underwood’s My Gift.
Upcoming holiday album releases that could impact the Top Holiday Albums chart include: Gloria Estefan, Emily Estefan and Sasha Estefan-Coppola’s Estefan Family Christmas (Oct. 13); Chris Isaak’s Everybody Knows It’s Christmas (released Oct. 14); Andrea, Matteo and Virginia Bocelli’s A Family Christmas (Oct. 21); Crowder’s Milk & Cookies: A Merry Crowder Christmas (Oct. 21); Debbie Gibson’s Winterlicious (Oct. 21); Thomas Rhett’s Merry Christmas, Y’all (Oct. 21); Pentatonix’s Holidays Around the World (Oct. 28); Alicia Keys’ Santa Baby (Nov. 4); Jane Monheit’s The Merriest (Nov. 4); Michael W. Smith’s Christmas at Home (Nov. 4); Switchfoot’s This Is Our Christmas Album (Nov. 4); Louis Armstrong’s Louis Wishes You a Cool Yule (Nov. 11); Nelson, A Nelson Family Christmas (Nov. 11); Loreena McKennitt, Under a Winter’s Moon (Nov. 18); André Rieu, Silver Bells (Nov. 18); the Spirited soundtrack (Nov. 18); David Foster and Katharine McPhee’s Christmas Songs (Nov. 25); and Cliff Richard’s Christmas With Cliff (Nov. 25).