The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LXIV

 Who's ready for the biggest f***ing disappointment of the 2020 Holiday Season? 

(. . .to date, obviously - 2020 ain't over yet.)

Album Title:  Scrooged (Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Album Artist:  Various Artists

I'm soooo pissed at this one.

Scrooged is a 1988 modern take on Dickens' A Christmas Carol, starring a top-of-his-game Bill Murray in what could be considered the greatest role of his career (right up there with Ghostbusters and Groundhogs Day.)  This classic is so damn awesome that it's always been, like, my third favorite Holiday film (behind National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and A Muppet Family Christmas.)  Kris and I make it a point to watch it a couple times every year during the season, and it never disappoints.  The music in the film, too, is great - plenty of classics, oldies, etc. - that are quintessential Holiday standards.

So, while watching the movie last year, I decided to pick up my phone and see if the soundtrack was released on vinyl.  Sure enough, there was a recent pressing (a Record Store Day release from a few years ago, I believe), and, coincidentally, shortly after finding it online, I just so happened to stop into Radio Wasteland and found a copy of it for a mere $17.  To the victor go the spoils, am I right folks?

Nope.

There's only one song on this whole Goddamn album that is even remotely worth listening to, and that's the opening track on Side A - the Annie Lennox/Al Green jam that plays as Bill Murray breaks the Fourth Wall at the end of the movie and starts talking to the audience as the credits begin to roll.  You know, after he stops acting like a douchebag and starts loving Christmas.  And the little black kid finally learns how to talk again and Bill starts making out with Indiana Jones' girlfriend.  'Put a Little Love in Your Heart.'  Know what I'm talking about?

But even with that song, something sounds off.  It's not exactly the version from the film.

As the rest of the soundtrack unfurled like a shit-stained bed sheet, I realized in horror that this soundtrack can barely pass as a Christmas record.  There's, like, three Goddamn Christmas songs on here, and they're all horrendous.  'The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),' which you'd think would be slam-dunked by Nat King Cole, is instead passed off to his daughter Natalie Cole. . . and the results are, well, ridiculously boring.  She can carry a tune, I suppose, but she's phoning this one in and sings like she doesn't need the money (I'm sure she's got plenty of her dad's left over.)

I almost breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Miles Davis had a track on this - where he teams up with David Sanborn, Paul Shaffer, and some other dudes - but his jazzed up version of 'We Three Kings of Orient Are' is so mathematical and filled with unnecessary time changes and signature shifts that it doesn't even sound like a f***ing song, let alone a Christmas song.

Every other waste of pressed frickin' vinyl on this album is a waste.  This is all late-80's R & B bullshit, and every bit of it sounds like it belongs in a middle school dance from my 5th grade year.  I was so abashed by the sheer betrayal of this album that I had to go back through and actually look for the parts of the movie where these songs were featured.  A Kool Moe Dee track that is listed on this album was in the movie for all of, like, six seconds (when the barely-clad back-up dancers in Bill Murray's TV production were practicing their dance moves.)  Another song that was playing in a rundown house belonging to an African American family, but so quiet in the background you almost miss it.  Yet another one was playing somewhere while two characters walk down a sidewalk.  It may have been on screen for about four seconds, tops.

But all those classic, nostalgic Holiday songs?  The other classic oldies that I mentioned before?

Nope.  They're not on here.  Not a one.

I can't believe I spent $17 on this.  I'm never playing this record again, but I am holding on to it for the time being so that it can increase in value on Discogs before I take it back into Radio Wasteland to sell back for store credit.

Son of a bitch. . .

VERDICT:  2/10 - Reality TV (This has to be one of the worst Christmas movie soundtracks I've ever heard.  I'm so pissed that I actually spent money on this train wreck. . .)

- SHELVED -

- Brian