SNL/Julian Casablancas – I Wish it Was Christmas Today (Chords)

Christmas songs are often so stupid they’re beyond parody. A point that was proved when Julian Casablancas turned SNL’s I Wish It Was Christmas Today into one of the best Christmas songs in the last decade.

I’ve arranged this with a capo on the third fret to move it to the key of C. But if you want to play without a capo you can replace C, F and G with Eb, Ab and Bb respectively.

Suggested Strumming

I use this strum twice for each chord the whole way through.

d – d – d u d u

Strum

Twiddly Bits

I’ve combined chords and the riff because they fall very nicely. If you prefer to play single notes just play the highest note (the note on the A-string until right at the end where it switches to the E-string).

There are a couple of variations in the riff from the SNL version. The tastiest is the A-string, 2nd fret (a flattened fifth against the F chord). It sounds very Strokes-esque.

Outro riff

Links

JulianCasablancas.com
Stokes Medley tab

I’ve written up the 2011 SNL version (since that’s when Tracy’s dancing peaked). But all the versions I’ve seen have the same chords with minor changes to the arrangement (usually thanks to fuckups). The only exception is when Fallon, Sanz and The Roots played it with Casablancas in his key on Late Night.

Suggested Strumming

Same as for the Casablancas version, this twice for each chord:

d – d – d u d u

Twiddly Bits

A rare easy transposition from guitar to ukulele. Everything is played on the high-E string of the guitar. So you can play it exactly the same way on the E-string of the ukulele.

Links

Saturday Night Live
More Christmas tabs and chords