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Here's Malcolm Middleton - who used to be in astonishingly bleak/funny indie doomaticians Arab Strap - and his perky festive anthem 'We're All Going To Die'. Which seems to indicate that while puppies are for life, not just for Christmas, humans might not even make it to the end of Boxing Day.

He won't want me to say it's a cracker, as that would be a bit exciteable and not really in the spirit of the song. So...

It is better, as they say, to give than to receive. Which means that Sarah Nixey, the former singer with the seriously amazing '90s arch-pop collective Black Box Recorder, is officially better than we are. Because she's made a version of 'Silent Night', with a band called Infantjoy, and she wants to give it away to you, the pop-hungry public.

I totally stole this news off the , by the way. I'm fairly sure it's worse to take than it is to either give OR receive, but do I care? I do not!

You may remember ChartBlog featured the very lovely Oli & Clive on one of our trawls down the back of pop's sofa for unappreciated musical gems. They had a lovely song called 'Excuse Me' which featured someone playing the musical saw. Well, that person is still playing only this time the songs are the Nativity Play classics 'Little Donkey' and 'Silent Night', which you can hear at the website for the band's record label -

I only mention this news because they're rather good, you see. And 'Little Donkey' has been given a bluegrass makeover which makes it a...altogether now....

Oh, no! Not that one, the other one!

That's better

Christmas is a time for the kiddies, right? And kiddies love spin-off singles from their favourite TV shows, don't they? So why don't we all settle down together and enjoy this. It's Shaun The Sheep, as sung by TV's Vic Reeves, and if you were a cockney, in the '50s, you might refer to it as 'a proper knees-up'.

Sadly the rest of us are far too old and sophisticated for this nonsense, so, unleashing ChartBlog's inner Scrooge, it's a....

For obvious reasons I can't really play the proper video to the re-release of Ernie K Doe's unearthed soul classic 'Here Come The Girls', largely because it's free advertising for a certain chain of chemists who are not Superdrug. But here's the song, accompanied by a very of-its-time picture of Mr K Doe himself, which is free of festive cheer in one respect - no sleighbells, no references to Santa and/or the baby Jesus - but is utterly festive in every other way.

Hey, you remember Blake? Y'know, those four Il Divo xeroxes who are making an awful lot out of their claim to have formed on Facebook, so much so that their official site links to Facebook as part of its navigation, prompting at least one snarky music-based blog (this one) to wonder if the band might perhaps have entered into some kind of promotional deal with Facebook, just to con media observers into creating a buzz about their very ordinary sort of rubbish faux-opera nonsense?

Well they've got a cover version of 'White Christmas' coming out and...and...

I don't really need to go on, do I? Don't buy it. Please don't buy it. I'm BEGGING YOU not to buy this record. I've heard their album too, and listening to it is like dying. They're so bad I can't even think of a suitably elaborate metaphor for how painful their music is. They are killing my MUSE, MAAAAAN...

'White Christmas' is available in all good record shops. LORD ALONE KNOWS WHY.

Again, we can't put up the video to this song, cos it's all about a certain high street shop, but some thoughtful soul has put clips of a well-known ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TV show against the soundtrack of Andy Williams' 'The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year', so we cant watch that instead. Don't read the credits at the end though, or your eyes will bleed.

There will be a proper review of this on a future ChartBlog posting, but it's very relevant, so I'll leave you with the Killers doing 'Don't Shoot Me Santa', and the question that's now on everyone's lips...is it a CRACKER! or is it DUFF!?