1984- "Thank God It's Christmas"

.....While I was turning my attention to my other blogs this spring the band Queen began yet another remaster/reissue program. It began with the first five studio titles in May, in which the bonus tracks of previous programs were removed and relocated to a second CD for each title, with additional material added. This may be great news for anyone too young to have sought out these albums before discovering the band while playing their songs in a video game, but it's harder for older collectors to get too excited over reissues of a band whose catalog has been generally well-handled and available for the better part of two decades. While I like the band, I could never keep pace with the fans who seek out what seems like an endless stream of rare alternate versions and test pressings that are constantly surfacing. In some cases the differences between variants are cosmetic and just a matter of packaging. In others, the differences are genuine such as with alternate takes or radically different mixes. Today's post involves a simple digital remaster, but it heralded the Silver Anniversary reissue program, which garnered more attention than this year's Fortieth Anniversary. Because most of their catalog had already been remastered for the band's Twentieth Anniversary, the Silver 'Jubilee' had to be a bit over the top, so they issued a 20-CD box called ULTIMATE QUEEN. Yet, even with 20 CD's you won't find this song on it.

• 04:19 "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS" (Roger Taylor, Brian May)
• -N/A- b/w "MAN ON THE PROWL" (Freddie Mercury)
• -N/A- b/w "KEEP ON PASSING THE OPEN WINDOWS" (Freddie Mercury)
• performed by Queen
• original source: 7" EMI QUEEN5 (UK) November 26, 1984
• and my source: CD5 EMI Parlophone CDQUEEN22 [7243 8 82611 2 8] (UK) December 11,1995

.....The only US release of the song in 1984 (and for some time after that) was 12" Capitol V-8622, which, like the British 12", had extended versions of the two B-side tracks. Throughout 1984 EMI had released four other singles from the LP WORKS. Those two B-sides were the only songs from the album that had not yet been released on a single in some form or another. The A-side was recorded in a special session late in the year and they must have seemed like conspicuous candidates for the flip, despite having nothing to do with Christmas.

.....The following year Queen had no new album prepared and instead released the 14-LP box COMPLETE WORKS. It contained all their previous original studio albums (including WORKS) plus 2LP LIVE KILLERS and an exclusive rarities LP called COMPLETE VISION, which contained "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS". The box couldn't be released in the US because the albums prior to WORKS were released through Elektra in the US. Another UK-only appearance of the song in 1985 was the first Christmas edition of the popular compilation series NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC. Brazilians got the most convenient package for Queen fans that year, a latter-era compilation that not only included "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS", but was named after it, an unusual move for an otherwise secular compilation but any fan in Brazil who still couldn't find the song just wasn't trying.

.....I first encountered the song on CD. It was an unusual package, 3CD THE QUEEN COLLECTION Hollywood Records HR-61407-2 (US) November 10, 1992. While the UK and Europe had recently seen GREATEST HITS Volumes I and II on CD, North America made do with two haphazard, non-chronological compilations: CLASSIC QUEEN and GREATEST HITS (no relation to the UK version). Bizarrely, THE QUEEN COLLECTION repackages those two compilations with a third disc entitled QUEEN TALKS, a nearly hour-long BBC Radio One interview followed by "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS".

.....After their final album, MADE IN HEAVEN, was released in November 1995, England saw the release of the CD5 that I cited as my source. It was the first single off the album, "A WINTER'S TALE". Track 2 was "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS" and track 3 was a live track called "ROCK IN RIO BLUES". The third track was not on the 7" vinyl format, but it was on the first US single off the album. It was the B-side of "TOO MUCH LOVE WILL KILL YOU", which wouldn't become a UK single until February 1996. Both the UK "TOO MUCH..." and a second version of the "A WINTER'S TALE" single use remastered mid-70's A-sides as their 'flip' tracks (even though CD singles aren't flipped over to play and don't have B-sides; there really should be a better term for the subordinate, non-hit tracks on CD singles). That was probably done to advertise the 20CD ULTIMATE QUEEN box, out at the time. If you're shopping online for the song "THANK GOD IT'S CHRISTMAS" and don't want a full album be advised that it's not on the second version of the "A WINTER'S TALE" single. Be careful to check the full track listing or the catalog number I included in the source note.

.....Another convenient location for the song is CD GREATEST HITS III Hollywood Records HR-62250-2 (US) 1999. The whole album is really a good distillation of their spotty final years. Since the second five albums due to be remastered for 2011 don't include WORKS, this compilation might be the most readily available source after downloadable mp3's.