35 years ago on October 12th, 1987 a historical event still inspires the music industry. Record executive and media proprietor Jimmy Iovine in collaboration with A&M Records released an album that is a compilation of 15 songs named ‘A Very Special Christmas’. This album has a sorrowful background. In the year 1985, Iovine’s father Vincent “Jimmy” Iovine died suddenly. Later, Jimmy was at his sister’s house when he decided to make a soulful tribute. He says, “Still, that was the worst day of my life.” After this miserable incident, Bruce Springsteen called Iovine, in which he told him, “I’m going to make a Christmas album for my dad”.
Iovine’s initial inspiration was ‘A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector’ which was released on November 22 in 1963. This album consisted of a compilation of 13 songs where Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans gave their sweet vocal. Iovine at first didn’t care a lot about the profit but also he didn’t want to see a dime from the album. He discussed this with his wife Vicki and asked for some help finding charity purposes. He boasted clearly, “I gotta get money out of the equation, so I can make it pure. I want this to be the purest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Vicki immediately called her friend Bobby Shriver, and as a coincidence, it turned out that they met together before during a football match where Bobby was the organizer. In order to arrange the funding, the Iovine couple attended a Special Olympics wrestling event. After watching a fake Hulk Hogan, a fake Randy ‘Macho Man’ Jimmy asked, “Why aren’t the real ones here?” Shiver explained that at that time charity wasn’t considered a cool thing among celebrities. Jimmy found another reason to make this album which would have made this cool. Finally, Shriver went to A&M Records and acquired their project funding.
‘A Very Special Christmas’ has 15 distinctive consecutive songs and it took 1986 to 1987 in organizing, recording, re-recording, begging, and cajoling the songs. The name of the songs and singers are,
- “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” by The Pointer Sisters
- “Winter Wonderland” by Eurythmics
- “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Whitney Houston
- “Merry Christmas Baby” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
- “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by The Pretenders
- “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” by John Cougar Mellencamp
- “Gabriel’s Message” by Sting
- “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-D.M.C.
- “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by U2
- “Santa Baby” by Madonna
- “The Little Drummer Boy” by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
- “Run Rudolph Run” by Bryan Adams
- “Back Door Santa” by Bon Jovi
- “The Coventry Carol” by Alison Moyet
- “Silent Night” by Stevie Nicks
The iconic album cover was crafted by Keith Haring. This cover consists of an outstanding outline of a mother embracing her child. The head of the A&M record arts department, Jeff Gold suggested it to him. That’s how one of the most amazing and everlasting magical artworks of music got its cover which is a mixture of a variety of colors. ‘A Very Special Christmas’ raised millions of dollars for the Special Olympics after its official release. It is still the 19th best-selling Christmas/holiday album in the United States and according to SoundScan, 2,520,000 copies are sold from March 1991 to the present.
Iovine in an interview said, “There’s just something about those songs, man. When you sing them, you can’t be the Grinch. I did something positive with it. When I see that album, I see one guy, and that’s my father. That’s all that mattered.”
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