Jackson 5’s Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town was written by accident after heartbreaking tragedy
The classic tune Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town is a festive hit everyone knows, but there’s a tragic backstory to the song. Made famous by the Jackson 5 in 1970, the hit was written years earlier J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934 when the Haven was asked to write a festive song for kids.
The sad backstory comes from the fact that Haven attended the meeting about creating the song straight from his twin brother's funeral and politely declined on account of his grief. But on the train journey home, Haven remembered all the happy Christmas times he'd enjoyed with his sibling and came up with the lyrics to the song, which include: "You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why... Santa Claus is coming to town."
Despite the song's popularity, Haven apparently avoided listening to it at all costs because he devastated over his brother's tragic passing. And that’s not the only Christmas classic with a sad backstory, the song Stay Another Day by East 17 was written by lead songwriter Tony Mortimer after a sad incident, and actually, the song wasn’t even intended to become a Christmas classic.
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Speaking to the Big Issue, Tony said: "It's so odd that it's a Christmas song. I wrote it about my brother's suicide - so it's about the end of a relationship, and missing someone. That's what it’s based on, and I think people like that. It might have been a hit because people felt sorry for me or whatever, but it's also a very nostalgic song for Christmas, for looking back over the years and times gone by."
Stay Another Day reached Number 1 in the UK charts when it was first released in 1994 and regularly reappears in the Top 50 in the lead up to Christmas.
White Christmas was a festive tune written by Irving Berlin, and was intended to be released as part of a Broadway musical. The musical never made it to stage, so the song was eventually sung by Bing Crosby - which is how we all know it now. The song debuted in the 1942 film Holiday Inn followed by White Christmas, and became the best-selling single of all time.
White Christmas is a song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting but again, the song actually had a heartbreaking backstory. Irving was Jewish and didn't celebrate Christmas. However, his son died on Christmas Day when he was just three weeks old and each year, he and his wife would visit their child’s grave.
Written in 1940, and released two years later, the song also had a big amount of meaning for soldiers serving in the Second World War. When Bing went overseas to perform, it was the tune that was most requested, but he was hesitant to sing it as it made the soldiers upset.
Bing once said: "I hesitated about doing it because invariably it caused such a nostalgic yearning among the men, that it made them sad. Heaven knows, I didn't come that far to make them sad. For this reason, several times I tried to cut it out of the show, but these guys just hollered for it."
