Darlene Love spills on U2’s ‘Baby (Christmas Please Come Home)’ cover and her special connection! Find out why it’s her favorite version, plus the untold story behind the iconic holiday tradition on The View!
In the six decades since the release of Darlene Love cherished song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” numerous artists have recorded their renditions, including Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, Leona Lewis, the Foo Fighters, Jon Bon Jovi, and most recently, Cher. However, in Love’s view, one version stands above the rest.
Darlene Love
PEOPLE has an exclusive preview of Love’s appearance on The View’s Behind the Table podcast, where the Grammy winner expresses her admiration for U2’s 1987 cover of the song.
“I have a connection with U2 and the song because U2 wanted me to do all the background parts, not me and some people,” she shares with podcast host Brian Teta, The View’s executive producer and showrunner. “I did all the background parts. We went in, and we did the song.”
“It has a special meaning to me because it’s totally different from what everybody else did,” adds Love, who is 82. “It was U2’s ‘Baby (Christmas Please Come Home).’ That’s what made it so great.”
U2 released their cover in December 1987 as part of the charity compilation album “A Very Special Christmas.” The band also filmed a music video for the song in November 1987 at the Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Of course, Love’s original remains the gold standard. Written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector, the song first appeared on the 1963 holiday compilation album, “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector.” Despite not charting on its initial release, it has achieved commercial success over the years, reaching No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022.
A yearly television live performance of the song became a holiday tradition for Love. Starting in 1986 and continuing for the next 29 years, she sang the song annually on the episode before Christmas of “Late Night with David Letterman” and “The Late Show with David Letterman.” When that show concluded in 2015, Love began performing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on The View, where she has remained ever since.
This tradition brought Love to Behind the Table. She recorded the podcast on Thursday after pre-taping her performance, which will air on Friday’s episode.
“I’ve just loved coming to The View every year,” Love tells PEOPLE backstage at The View on Thursday. “I was so loyal to David Letterman because he really reignited my career by bringing me back every year, so I deliberately wouldn’t perform it anywhere else so I could make it special. And the last thing he said to me was, ‘I hope someone picks this up’ — because it was so much fun to do there. So to keep that tradition going as long as we can was important, and somebody, a little bird, heard him, and we brought it over to The View.”
Every year, various artists join Love on The View to duet on the song, including Rob Thomas, Jason Derulo, Bryan Adams, Patti LaBelle, and Golden Globe nominee Fantasia. This year, it will be Steven Van Zandt.
But the co-hosts of The View, who sing backup, often garner the most attention.
