Christmas is a time for bringing out some half-hearted goodwill and cheer. Every band and artist has done it, to varying degrees of success. We cannot know yet which of these recent releases will stick around for as long as, say, Wonderful Christmastime, objectively the best seasonal offering to date. Olivia Rodrigo tries her hand at the festive thrills just as Bleachers, LCD Soundsystem, and Jarvis Cocker once did. As great as Rodrigo is as a songwriter and musician, who is keen to wear her influences on her sleeve, the line is blurred somewhat with Take Me Home (4 Christmas). She may draft in Robert Smith from The Cure for collaborations or look to Elvis Costello‘s Pump It Up for an instrumental inspiration, but there’s a pattern emerging in how Rodrigo pieces together her music. She’s not quite Daft Punk, pulling apart pieces of a song and creating a new meaning and sound with noise we never heard, no. She’s just ripping at already established sounds to bring in a false sense of comfort.
Rodrigo has spoiled a fair bit of goodwill here. Look, if you want people to listen to The Waitresses’ much superior Christmas Wrapping, just say so. You don’t need to dumb down the structure and style of the Patty Donahue-fronted group. This is not the first time Rodrigo has jumped on a new wave icon’s work and adapted it without much care for the comparisons and criticism to come from doing so. But Rodrigo has made strong work elsewhere, and not every artist can turn down the appeal of a catchy Christmas hit. Just think of how many more presents Rodrigo will be able to purchase when this sails up to the top of the charts in time for the Black Friday sale. Approval from the band to use their material is not a reason to use it. But for Rodrigo, it’s enough.
It’s not enough for listeners who want new and original material for the holiday season, a time when the biggest names are most likely to send in work that is well below par. Few artists have set out with honest intentions for the holiday season, and this feels more like Rodrigo trying to drag Christmas into her brand of popular material than adapting her wordplay and work, which is often quite fun, to the season. It’s a solid song all the same. Costello made the point that he wouldn’t have a career had he not ripped Bob Dylan’s riffs, and so the same goes, in a roundabout way, for Rodrigo and Costello and The Waitresses. Likeable and catchy is what Rodrigo offers here but it’s hardly a reinvention of the Christmas riffs. It doesn’t need to be. What it needs to be is a clinical and catchy assessment of what the holidays mean to people. It’s not that, either.
Take Me Home (4 Christmas) is both a spot of catchy material built off the back of others and a personable, longing song. Smart writing as ever, that’s to be expected from Rodrigo, though it doesn’t quite pull Take Me Home (4 Christmas) over the line this time. The trouble is the half-hearted assessment of what Christmas could be in this idealised experience with a loved one. Hungover brunch with family members, it’s playful but not at all personable. Not quite, anyway. Rodrigo has offered far better than this. If you’re to do a Christmas song then put your heart into it. This feels a bit more like a throwaway than anything that can be considered anywhere close to sincere. A shame, too, since that’s been the driving force of her album material to date. Take Me Home (4 Christmas) is an underwhelming one, a bit of a stocking filler at best.
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