Phil Spector's 'A Christmas Gift to You': A Seasonal Word Cloud

​This week's musical word cloud is more festive and positive than last week's stunning explication of N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton -- that is, if you ignore the fact that its creator is currently sitting in prison after having been convicted of murder earlier in the year. If you're new to this, each week we highlight a classic Los Angeles album and boil its lyrics down to their essence by using the word cloud generating website wordle.

Ho ho ho, indeed: A Christmas Gift to You is Phil Spector's masterpiece, a thirteen song collection of Christmas songs released on November 22, 1963 -- the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated -- sung by the expert producer's roster of singers, including the Crystals, the Ronettes, Darlene Love, and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. The session musicians for said classic are the amazing Wrecking Crew, which at that time included Sonny Bono, Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Jack Nietsche, Leon Russell and others.

The record of mostly secular Christmas songs nonetheless concentrates on some of the big themes of the season, as you'll see below, but tucked within the crevices are a bunch of smaller, more curious themes: mommy, broken, fingernail, thump, tickle, reindeer.

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