Musical Montage: Al Green & Annie Lennox “Put A Little Love in Your Heart”
Although it gets overshadowed a bit by the likes of A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation, those of us in the know put 1988’s Scrooged on par with any Christmas classic. Starring Bill Murray as the egotistical Frank Cross, a TV president who is putting on a live version of A Christmas Carol for Christmas Eve. The fictional story starts to invade Frank’s life as he himself is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and he learns the classic lesson about the true meaning of Christmas. The movie was a pretty big hit upon release but was not well received by critics at the time, currently sitting with a 38 on Metacritic but frequent broadcasts on TV have made it a cult classic. As the emotional climax of the film, Frank, filled with Christmas spirit, leads the entire cast and crew of his A Christmas Carol production in a version of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon and, for the movie’s soundtrack, Al Green and Annie Lennox were recruited for a duet version of the song. The Green/Lennox version spent 17 weeks on the US charts and peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1989 and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It also charted in numerous countries around the world. The official music video is pretty simple as it’s just Lennox and Green dressed in white in front of a snowy black background as clips from Scrooged are interspersed throughout. Check it out below.
