Though it comes from a sincere place (an Applebee's date night tradition with his wife Laney), Walker Hayes has leaned into the silliness of "Fancy Like" since at least the posting of the father-daughter TikTok dance that made the song one of the ubiquitous crossover hits of 2021.
Hayes' unlikely ascent positions a cappella group Straight No Chaser to laugh with him, not at him, throughout holiday-appropriate parody "Christmas Like."
"So every now and then when I get paid / I got to spoil my Christmas with an upgrade / yeah, we Fancy Like, Applebees for the big night / got the Bourbon Street steak with the gingerbread shake / slice of fruitcake on the side too / sliced ham, canned yams / yo, I got you / boujee like egg nog in the styrofoam / Chris Kringle in the big sled all the way home / matching holiday pajamas and the sweater with the lights / that's how we do, how we do Christmas like," goes a chorus that replaces Hayes' cool dad swagger with Christmas cheer.
In the spirit of the original, Straight No Chaser members Randy Stine, Tyler Trepp, Seggie Isho, Michael Luginbill, Walter Chase, Jerome Collins, Charlie Mechling, Steve Morgan and Jasper Smith come across in the "Christmas Like" music video as if they love life and hate taking themselves too seriously.
"As we are known as a holiday group to many, the idea was conceived to try to make our holiday 'fancy like,'" Walter Chase told Sounds Like Nashville. "Seggie sketched out the theme for each verse and created the first draft of lyrics. I worked on the musical arrangement and then took a run at the lyrics based on Seggie's draft. What we came up with was what you hear on the record."
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Straight No Chaser formed in 1996 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. Its version of "12 Days of Christmas" from more than a decade back made the group synonymous with Christmas songs. Falling down a YouTube rabbit hole turned up the group's holiday treatment of Toto's "Africa." It's as delightful as you'd hope.
