Bob Schwartz

Sure he was a Jew making a Christmas album. Sure he was a convicted murderer.

Phil Spector is also in the pantheon of record producers. He changed pop music forever. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, another production genius, started his career trying to better him.

Then there is A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963). There were attempts to contemporize Christmas classics before, there have been many attempts after. To make the music sound eternal but new. This is the ultimate. In 2019, Rolling Stone ranked it the greatest Christmas album of all time. Brian Wilson cited this as his favorite album of all time.

Which is why searching Christmas Eve morning for something that hit the target—music not too familiar, music not straining too hard to be “different”—I ended up with Spector. His gift to us.