Phil Spector's "A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector", ft. Darlene Love

About this episode

In this special holiday episode of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums, our new podcast on Amazon Music, we delve into 1963's "A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector", an album that changed the way we look at holiday music. In 2019, Rolling Stone named it the best Christmas album of all time. A labor of love that pulled together all the top girl groups, including the Crystals and the Ronettes, the album was initially an ill-fated flop, dropping the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated (or so the legend goes). After being reissued in 1972 the record found its place in both the holiday and rock & roll canons, and inspired everyone from the Beach Boys to Bruce Springsteen to take a crack at Christmas standards. There was darkness under that festive tree, however, as the infamous perfectionist Spector directed artists on the record with an iron fist and later took his obsession with guns to a far darker place when he killed actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. Spector was unable to talk with Rolling Stone's News Editor Brenna Ehrlich for this episode (as he is serving time for second-degree murder), but she did chat with Darlene Love of the Blossoms about the fame of "Ch