KT Tunstall / Have Yourself a Very KT Christmas - EP / 2007
Mele Kalikimaka (Christmas In Hawaii)
breezy, sunny, celebratory
This is a cover of the well-worn 1949 novelty holiday standard, in which KT Tunstall adopts a sunny, tropical alternative to traditional snowy Christmas imagery. The song simply repeats its central greeting and postcard-like description of a warm-weather Christmas across several near-identical verses, functioning as cheerful seasonal pastiche rather than personal songwriting.
displaced tradition warmth versus winter iconography cultural greeting as ritual festive escapism
Who's speaking
A collective, unnamed island voice ('we') addresses an outside listener ('you'), inviting them into an imagined Hawaiian Christmas; the narrator is more a tour guide or postcard-writer than a personal speaker, and the voice is deliberately generic rather than confessional.
What happens
There isn't really a narrative arc — the song is cyclical, restating the same greeting and the same handful of images (palm trees, sun, stars, green skies) in each pass, with only slight phrasing variation and a final stretched-out sign-off replacing the usual closing line.
How it's built
Built from two paired stanzas functioning as verse and refrain, repeated three times with almost no lyrical variation; the only structural movement comes at the very end, where the final repetition breaks the pattern by fragmenting the closing phrase into shorter exclamatory pieces before resolving on the full greeting.
Section by section
Opening verse
Establishes the core conceit immediately: a greeting phrase is introduced and defined for an audience assumed not to know it, setting the song up as an explainer-postcard more than a story. .) ,}>-,.} Actually let me keep simple.</br>
Refrain
“Christmas will be green and bright”
The refrain redefines 'green' away from its usual association with evergreen trees toward lush tropical foliage, doing the song's main interpretive work by relocating Christmas imagery geographically without altering its emotional warmth.
Final repetition
“Merry Christmas (say) / Merry Christmas”
The closing section breaks the song's rigid repetition by stuttering the final greeting into shorter calls before resolving into a fuller phrase, giving the performance a live, call-and-response energy that functions as the track's one real structural payoff.
Craft
- repetition
- The near-total repetition of verses mimics the way a holiday greeting itself gets repeated year after year, reinforcing the song's identity as a ritual phrase rather than an evolving story.
- juxtaposition
- Traditional Christmas imagery (snow, cold, evergreen trees) is implicitly contrasted with palm trees, sun, and warmth, reframing what counts as seasonal atmosphere.
- code-switching/loanword use
- The Hawaiian phrase anchors the song, letting the title itself do the thematic work of blending two cultural registers — the holiday standard and island language — within an English-language pop structure.
Reading it
Read straightforwardly, the song is a lighthearted regional variant of a Christmas standard, substituting beach imagery for snow to represent how the holiday is experienced in Hawaii. There's little ambiguity or subtext to mine here — this is a cover of an established novelty song, and its interest lies more in performance and arrangement than in hidden meaning. The only mild critical angle available is noting how the song quietly argues that Christmas sentiment is portable and not bound to its Northern Hemisphere, wintry trappings.
Context
The original song 'Mele Kalikimaka' was written by R. Alex Anderson in 1949 and popularized by Bing Crosby; it has since become a holiday standard covered by many artists. Tunstall's version appears on a 2007 holiday EP of covers, 'Have Yourself a Very KT Christmas,' and functions as a seasonal release rather than part of her core songwriting catalog. I don't have specific details on her arrangement choices or recording circumstances for this cover beyond what's inferable from the lyric structure itself.
Listen for
- How Tunstall's vocal tone and phrasing bring warmth or playfulness to an otherwise fixed, repetitive lyric
- Any instrumental choices (ukulele, steel guitar, horns) that reinforce the tropical reframing of Christmas imagery
- The rhythmic breakup of the final chorus compared to the steadier repetition earlier in the song
- Whether the arrangement nods to the original Bing Crosby version or diverges stylistically
About KT Tunstall
Kate Victoria "KT" Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. She first gained attention with a 2004 live solo performance of her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later...
b. 1975 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue