FEATURE:
To Conjure Mr. Wilde, Into the Silent Night…
Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again at Forty-Three
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I have written about this song before…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Wellington/Pexels
but, as we are nearing Christmas – and shops are already playing Christmas music! -, I thought I would spend time with a Kate Bush Christmas song. She did release another, Home for Christmas, in 1992. Her best Christmas effort was released on 17th November, 1980. December Will Be Magic Again is one of those deep cuts and lost songs that people don’t rank with her best. You do hear it on the radio pretty much as soon as December starts. Even so, there is not a lot written about this jewel. I think it is really beautiful and evocative! Recorded in 1979 and premiered for her Christmas Special in December 1979, it was held back and released as the next single after Army Dreamers (from Never for Ever). I wonder why it was not put out as a single in 1979. Perhaps, as Bush was working on her third studio album, she wanted that to come out first. Perhaps the label didn’t think it was time to release a Christmas single. It is a track that deserved a bit more faith. No music video was made for the single. That was a new thing for Kate Bush at that point. It was a decision that cost it a few chart places for sure! Kate Bush performed December Will Be Magic Again for the Christmas Snowtime Special, broadcast by the BBC on 22nd December, 1979. Dressed in a red suit, there is some imitation snow to convey the wintery atmosphere. In her Kate Christmas Special, she is sat at the piano and sings to camera. I could image a really nice video of her at home, or her surrounded by family. Maybe looking up to the skies as it snows. Walking the streets as lovers embrace and there are carols being sung. It is a missed opportunity to not only create a great music video but also to add something to the song.
Even if the lyrics are fairly standard in terms of their imagery, it is a rare opportunity to hear Kate Bush in this setting. Like all of her songs, there are distinct lyrics that set her aside from contemporaries. My favourite lines are these: “Ooh, dropping down in my parachute/The white city, she is so beautiful/Upon the black-soot icicled roofs/Ooh, and see how I fall/See how I fall/("Fall!") [backwards]”. December Will Be Magic Again is a song that could still have an animated music video. It is a song that gets played every year, yet most people know very little about it. This is one of quite a few Kate Bush numbers not available on Spotify. It would be nice to see this track given more exposure. Perhaps not in her top twenty songs of all time, I still have a lot of affection and time for December Will Be Magic Again. Why did this song only reach twenty-nine here in the U.K. I wonder? Whilst Bush does not break moulds when it comes to Christmas songs, I feel it is stronger than it is given credit for. The Dreams of Orgonon website, writing about December Will Be Magic Again in 2019, looked back forty years to the recording of a track that might have worked better if it was mixed and produced differently – maybe take some layers away and make it sounds more live:
“Finally there’s the single version of the song that made it to #29 in the UK (it fared better in Ireland, a consistent supporter of Bush, where it reached #13) and it gets the final say on how this song gets read. Released two months after Never for Ever, it’s a standalone single that clearly wants to fill the “Wuthering Heights” and “Wow” archetype. Never for Ever is decidedly less a pop record than its predecessors, and pointedly lacks a sweeping dramatic single about the power of youthful precocity. Releasing a nostalgic paean like “December Will Be Magic Again” in its wake is an odd move, one that feels like Bush is pushing against the current trajectory of her songwriting in order to revive a song that debuted before “Babooshka.” That’s understandable — serious artists get to do silly holiday anthems as well. The problem with the single recording of “December Will Be Magic Again” is that it’s convinced the song merits the same seriousness as “Wuthering Heights” and “Wow.” It’s overproduced to hell, sounding more like a Phil Collins track than a Christmas ballad with its slow, powerful drumming, soaring guitar solos, and agonizingly overstated backing vocals from Bush. It’s hard to figure out why Bush recorded this song so many times — perhaps her perfectionism took over for a while. Whatever the case, it’s much easier to imagine this song working as a quiet piano-driven B-side for, say, “Army Dreamers,” which already had “Passing Through Air” for backmatter. The single is mistimed, needing to be set back a year or so for it to work.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in 1979 for her one-off BBC Christmas Special, Kate/PHOTO CREDIT: TV Times/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Yet with “December Will Be Magic Again,” we see the end of a certain kind of Bush song. It’s her last track that can be feasibly reimagined as hailing from her pre-Kick Inside years, with its relish for childhood delights and simple attributes of a domestic environment. That approach has reached a breaking point. From now on her quiet songs will be more adult and introspective. She’s going to do silly songs in the future, of course — but even the silly stuff often carries plenty of weight. Bush’s earlier work is an ambitious testament to what youthful artistry can accomplish. Few songwriters are particularly mature early in their career. With Bush, a lot of her recurring themes from across her career are already in place on her first couple albums. For all its shortcomings, “December Will Be Magic Again” signals the end of Bush as prodigy as she moves into the era of the Fairlight, global conflict, and becoming a masterful singer to rival Peter Gabriel. Farewell, last of the Phoenix tradition. You’ve carried us far.
Recorded at London AIR Studios in 1979. Performed on 22 December for BBC Snowtime Special and 28 December for “Kate” special. Single version recorded in November 1980. Released as a single on 17 November 1980”.
It was an interesting period for Kate Bush. 1980 was a year when her third studio album was released. The first that she co-produced (with Jon Kelly), it came out in September that year. I would encourage people to read a feature Bush wrote in 1980. She looked back on a busy year. Looking forward to Christmas! Twenty-two when December Will Be Magic Again was released, she was a young woman still making her first steps through music. Developing her work and becoming more ambitious. As Bush loves Christmas so much, you can feel how much December Will Be Magic Again means to her! It was not just a commercial move or something she felt that she had to do. As it is forty-three on 17th November, I wanted to spend time with a beautiful gem that does not get the love it deserves. It would have been nice to have a music video for it. Regardless, the fact that the track is played to this day means it can rank alongside the essential Christmas songs. The images and themes of snow would be explored more by Bush in her most recent studio album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. In 1979, she recorded something truly magical that I feel sounds gorgeous and touching to this day. We are only a few weeks away until we will hear December Will Be Magic Again. I, for one…
CANNOT wait.