Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is one of the songs in that David Cook playlist I posted below. It was a performance he did at the Rockefeller Tree Lighting Ceremony on Dec. 3. He sang the song again for a Disney Christmas special which aired yesterday in the US, and this one is even better. My favorite line in the song is "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" - Cook does it differently here. Whereas at Rockefeller he did it in his signature rock manner, at Disney he did a soft falsetto, and it's disarmingly beautiful, watch and listen:
I've always loved the song because it is both melancholy and hopeful. I have this vague recollection of a line that goes "Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow", and of a Judy Garland version. So I did a little search, and found that Judy Garland actually is tied to the history of the song (I think I've read of the movie Meet Me in St. Louis in relation to the song, but yeah, trust my brain to file that correctly in my memory banks). It turns out that the "Until then..." line was replaced with "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough". Read all about it here. Given this, Cook's version becomes all the more poignant and affecting.
In any case, I can't end this blog without sharing this too. Here's the Judy Garland version, watch and weep:
