With nearly 118,000 subscribers and over 350,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, one hopes that Johnny Goth remains a fully independent artist due only to a steadfast refusal of god-awful label offers. Thankfully for them, independence does have its nightmarish advantage in fully autonomous creative vision, something Johnny boldly embodies.

“I’ll have a black Christmas without you
I’ll be so sad just thinkin’ about you”

Hailing from Los Angeles with an initial 2015 release, the group’s music has developed from a “faceless dream pop“, to a darker make-up-cloaked spirited garage sound, more recently ascended to a merged nightmarish aesthetic they have appropriately dubbed “overcast“. Theirs is a music that has been largely built upon a holy shoestring budget utilizing cleverly reappropriated neck-lace nooses of 100% macabre cotton.

”And when those black snowflakes start falling
That’s when the black memories start calling”

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Perhaps aptly chosen, this newly released remake of perennial favorite “Blue Christmas” has an interesting backstory of its own. The song originally recorded by Doye O’Dell in 1948 was re-recorded by several other artists before being decidedly covered by Elvis Presley (shared below) on his 1957 Elvis’ Christmas Album notably becoming one of his most iconic and oddly ironic. Being forced to record the song against his wishes, Elvis instructed his background singers to “do something silly” while he crooned the main vocals in an intentionally choppy manner in an attempt to deliberately sabotage the recording.

“Presley’s version is notable musicologically as well as culturally in that the backing vocal group the Jordanaires (especially in the soprano line, sung by Millie Kirkham) replace many major and just minor thirds with neutral and septimal minor thirds, respectively. In addition to contributing to the overall tone of the song, the resulting “blue notes” constitute a musical play on words that provides an “inside joke” or “quail egg” to trained ears,” per Wikipedia.

”We’ll drink poison instead of the eggnog and then
we’ll have a black Christmas”

Unlikely to be played to a backdrop of Los Angelean snow-buried streets, or icicle-laden homes with front-lawn Frosty’s sporting button noses and eyes of coal, “Black Christmas” remains a darkly dreamy holiday vision, perchance played upon dimly lit bedroom walls within depths of sleep paralysis while connected to medical IVs of cyanide-infused Christmas cheer.

”Time to turn down the lights on your Christmas of white
You’ll have a black Christmas”

~

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