“The 50 Best Holiday Songs of All Time”

• By Liz Pelly
• Pitchfork
• 21-Nov 2016

“Frosty the Snowman”

Volume, 1992

#36

Few musical styles conjure the shimmering feeling of snowfall like dream-pop, and few artists have painted dream-pop in more mesmerizing abstractions than Cocteau Twins. In the early 1990s, after releasing their landmark album Heaven or Las Vegas, the group moved to London to work on the album Four-Calendar Café. In that three-year span, they released only two songs, including this holiday staple, a take on “Frosty the Snowman” that beams with the Scottish group’s typically lush, droning guitars and translucent harmonies.

According to bassist Simon Raymonde, after he wrote down the lyrics and showed them to Elizabeth Fraser, they had a good laugh: “As we were going through it, I was listening to Liz’s reactions and thinking, this is never gonna get done. She was going, ‘He’s a very happy soul’—me sing that?! No way, I could not in a million years.” But, in a true holiday miracle, the band made it their own. Their reinvention naturally feels a bit heavier than the usual chirpy children’s tune: It’s a surreal, slow story-song about a happy, jolly soul running to escape the sun before it melts him away. It’s a sad goodbye, really, under the sheen of smiles and snowflakes. ▣

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