The 27th (and next-to-last) track on His ND Xmas is
"Santa I Got Your Number" by Tommy Tutone.
There's a special spot on my holiday mixes for artists that turn their own songs into Christmas songs. Tommy Heath (like Debbie Harry and Blondie, Tommy Heath is the lead singer of the band Tommy Tutone!) probably noticed at some point that the words to "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" matched pretty well with the tune of his biggest hit, and decided to match them up for giggles. It's common for Weird Al or Dr. Demento novelty acts to do this, but not that common when the actual artist does it.
The two songs match up pretty well if you adhere to the Spector/Springsteen arrangement of "Santa Claus". The choruses ("Santa Claus is comin' to town" and "867-5309") have the same number of syllables, and the verses follow the same meter more or less. And the rest is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!
1 comment:
Yep. Of course, there's a slight shift: the two syllables "seven" turn into the single syllable "Claus," and the single syllable of "three" turns into the two of "comin'" - and of course, "town" and "nine" have five syllables each in the Tommy Tutone rendition.
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