Jingle Bells

Sinatra's version of this Christmas standard is in many ways the defining American treatment of Yuletide as occasion for extroverted communal pleasure — the rhythm section swings with genuine authority, the brass section punches with the confidence of people who know they're playing the best arrangement in town, and his vocal is pure performance swagger, relaxed to the point of seeming unrehearsed but impossibly precise. He approaches the lyrics as an actor approaching material he's inhabited so completely that spontaneity and mastery have become indistinguishable. The bell-and-sleigh imagery of the original acquires a metropolitan overlay in his reading — this is Christmas in New York, or Las Vegas, or wherever a man in a beautiful coat is having the best time anyone in the room is capable of having. The production's period warmth — that particular quality of mid-century Capitol Records recordings — functions as its own form of holiday nostalgia, a sound that itself encodes a lost American confidence. Ideal for cocktail parties where adults intend to behave like the best version of themselves.