There’s still Christmas candy on the store shelves, so this thread is still timely.
Tonight, we celebrate an iconic album, 1980’s Christmas In The Stars. And by “Stars”, of course we mean Star Wars. That’s right, Star Wars had a holiday album! There was a shocking amount of talent involved in this album. Anthony Daniels reprised C-3PO and narrated, Ben Bratt provided R2-D2 and Chewbacca noises, Ralph McQuarrie created the album cover, and the album’s story and most of its songs were written by Maury Yeston, who would go on to win two Tonys for Nine and Titanic. Also, some guy named John Bongiovi sang lead on the track “R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. All in service of a half hour novelty album about a droid factory making toys for Santa Claus.
The entire album is on YouTube, but I want to highlight one track in particular – Doctor Demento show favorite “What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb?)”.
Fun trivia, when this album saw its first CD release in 1994, there were NO references to Star Wars on the packaging outside of the track listing. The cover of that release, as shown in this eBay listing, is a holiday scene that couldn’t be more generic if it tried. Two years later, it was rereleased with the original McQuarrie cover art, something Wikipedia attributes to “the popularity of the Shadows of the Empire project” without a shred of evidence.
Have fun posting!