Organic Intelligence XXXIX: Christmas Doo-Wop

In the final antidote to the algorithm of 2024, Daniel Spicer takes tQ's subscribers back to the sweet yet sorrowful sounds of festive doo-wop

Was there ever a style of music as dripping with sentimentality as doo-wop? Originating among Black communities in major US cities in the late 1940s, doo-wop was, right from the very beginning, the sound of longing. But it was a longing of a very specific kind. 

The blues had always been about transcending suffering and drudgery. Jazz was a roaring cry for emancipation and respect. Gospel pinned the heart in supplication on God’s great altar. But doo-wop had a much simpler plea. It was just desperate to get laid. Largely performed – and listened to – by teenagers, doo-wop was the sound of hormones gone haywire, of unfulfilled desire, of a raging physical passion that wouldn’t go away. But, given the mores of the day, the kids couldn’t just come out and talk about how horny they were. Their longing was disguised in tales of thwarted romance, broken hearts and cruel jiltings.

All of which, in a strange cultural twist, made it the perfect vehicle for some of the most glorious Christmas songs ever recorded. At the height of doo-wop’s commercial popularity throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, young groups looking for a Christmas hit channelled the music’s fierce energy of unrequited sexual yearning into an intense festive longing. Alchemising the excessively schmaltzy sentimentality of the season, they conjured sweetly weeping tragedies of lonely holidays, unused mistletoe and gifts ungiven. It’s a downtrodden sound, lachrymose and left behind, forever watching the lucky ones’ warm, carefree festivities of the heart through a steamed-up window while our hangdog heroes stand around on street corners, collars turned up against the cold, honing their a cappella laments.

So, lets unwrap a few of these bittersweet offerings and wallow in the heartsore sound of Christmas doo-wop.