Song of the Day 12/19: Perry Como, “(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

It took just one day to write a Christmas song that’s been a staple of the season for 70 years. Sometimes you get your work done pretty fast when the boss demands it.

Mitch Miller, then chief A&R man at Columbia Records, told composer Robert Allen and lyricist Al Stillman he needed a Christmas song within 24 hours. Allen’s widow later explained what happened next. Her husband headed to the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center looking for inspiration. Watching the Christmas cheer for few hours, he found it. The result was “(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays.”

Stillman, who later wrote the Johnny Mathis hit “Chances Are,” was Perry Como’s frequent accompanist and it was Como who first recorded the song. In fact, he recorded it twice, in 1954 and then a somewhat more elaborate version for an album in 1959. That’s probably the one you hear on the radio.

There’s little doubt that Como was a key to its success. Laid-back Perry was right up there with Bing and Frank as a popular recording artist of the time. His relaxed style was often parodied by Eugene Levy on the later “SCTV” television show, which showed him singing languidly while lying on his back.

Relaxed or not, Como’s style was praised by none other than Bob Dylan. “He can afford to be unassuming because he has what it takes,” Dylan writes in “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” “A man with lightning in his pocket doesn’t ever brag.”

The song has found a home on ASCAP’s annual list of most-played holiday records, reaching as high as the mid-20s. So we don’t need a lyric sheet to follow along. What is the “man from Tennessee” going to have when he gets home to Pennsylvania? “Some home-made pumpkin pie.” What does the singer say about all the homeward-bound cars on the road? “Gee, the traffic is terrific.”

There was an online reddit debate about the implication of that last line. Some, completely misunderstanding it, professed surprise that he would complain about traffic when he’s so cheerful about the rest of it. But he’s probably just remarking on how so many others share his warm feeling about home. He also needed a rhyme for “Pacific.”

This is not “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” where the melancholy singer knows he’s never going to get there. This is a cheerful song. “If you want to be happy in a million ways/For the holidays, you can’t beat home, sweet home.”

The song starts kind of slow but soon picks up a little and then a little more.

Many have covered this song from Robert Goulet to the Muppets. Only Karen Carpenter could make it sound a little sad, but the Carpenters’ version is still one of the best out there.