C.S.>>> "LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS"

MUD's second British number one, from December 1974, is also one of the most enduring festive pop hits of the 1970s, a moving, heartfelt ballad which really wouldn't have been out of place on one of Elvis Presley's Christmas collections. The fact that Les Gray is, once again, in full Elvis sound-alike mode for the song, of course, only heightens the impression, which was precisely what songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman were intending. " Nicky and I were only concerned with writing songs that he could sing...like Elvis," Chapman confessed, "and I took that to its absolute extreme with Lonely This Christmas."
"It started as a send-up," Gray himself remembered. "It was meant to be like one of those old schmaltzy Christmas songs. Then we found out people took it seriously. But that was fine, because it didn't matter if you laughed at it, or if it meant something to you, as long as it affected you in some way."
Lonely This Christmas has been regularly reissued in the U.K., even returning to the chart in 1985, when it reached number 61 (David Thompson in Allmusic)

(Painting by Edward Hopper, "Night Hawks", 1942)