Jimmy Fallon's a Hit

As a genre, Christmas music is the definition of easy listening, one that blankets the listener in cozy familiarity, falling back on stock images while heightening domestic bliss. Even if we collectively recognize how creepy “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” sounds or routinely find ourselves baffled by whoever “Parson Brown” is supposed to be, voicing our opinions aloud is useless because they’re certain to be drowned out by Mariah Carey’s whistle notes... usually in mid-September.

No one wanted a straightforward Christmas album from Jimmy Fallon, least of all the man himself. After a recording session with an entire big band at his disposal, The Tonight Show host pulled the plug on plans for a more traditional crooner record after cringing over the results. “I hope they destroyed the hard drive,” the comedian confides to PAPER, having thought, “We don’t need this, the world doesn't need this. We have great singers out there... [that] can actually sing.”

What Fallon did next was regroup, using down-time between his demanding show schedule to flesh out concepts that approached the holidays from odd angles. If Christmas songs are so omnipresent, why not try and stake out your own? Sketches of ideas would be recorded and passed off to famous friends, who would refine and alter them. A voice message (working title “Wrap It Up”) sent off to Meghan Trainor was overhauled when she warned it sounded like he was singing about condoms; Dolly Parton’s encouragement (a dream present) still meant working out how to exercise the full extent of his range.

Full of tracks that invert or exaggerate holiday music tropes, Holiday Seasoning still works tightly within its conventions. You could say this is not terribly far removed from Fallon’s own career as a comedian. Like Christmas jingles, the format of The Tonight Show has remained fairly standard since the 1950s, even as it’s had to contend and adapt with social media and the internet. What is different is Fallon’s energy, which can only be described as a human exclamation point. His only concession to the faux-professionalism of his Tonight Show predecessors is wearing beautiful suits, although the thrill he gets from wearing Christmas sweaters and pajamas (or, if you will, P’Jimmies) is palpable. On Holiday Seasoning and Fallon’s most recent specials, you can trace the origin of his almost volcanic enthusiasm back to geniuses of novelty song like Dr. Demento, but especially to “Weird Al” Yankovich. This through-line snakes throughout his career from his early days on SNL all the way to the present; in a full-circle moment, Weird Al even appears on the album with The Roots to do a New Year’s Eve polka.

It’s fascinating to compare PAPER covers as benchmarks for the comedian’s progress. The 2001 photo of Fallon scowling in John Lennon’s “New York City” t-shirt was his first cover ever, and it immediately announced him as an alternative heart throb, the kind of network TV personality who could credibly go from primetime to downtown and back again. More than two decades later, for PAPER’s 40th anniversary, he’s back on the cover and in an altogether different position: at the very heart of the mainstream, squaring his quirks for a mass audience and onto a global stage.

PAPER met up with Jimmy Fallon to discuss Christmas, TikTok, novelty songs, yacht rock, working with icons like Dolly Parton and "Weird Al" Yankovic and more.

Congrats on number three!

On what?

On number three, this is your third PAPER cover.

No, it is not. I remember the first one. What was the second one?

The first one is you alone in a white t-shirt and then there's another one where it's the most insane constellation of stars I've ever seen in my life: Johnny Knoxville, Björk, Joey Arias, the drag cabaret singer... and you.

Wow, I don't remember that one! I mean, I think PAPER was my first cover ever. I'll never forget it. It was the most fun thing ever, because I was so new on Saturday Night Live. And when you're new on Saturday Night Live, you don't normally get the cover of magazines, so it was a cool, weird thing. And I was so excited. I remember Mickey [Boardman] had this giant dinner at some cool restaurant and I was sitting with Chloë Sevigny. And that was the dinner I got introduced to Tara Subkoff and we ended up going out for a while.

Oh, wow. History.

It was a big chapter in my life. I love PAPER. I do remember thinking that wouldn't be the cover because that was the John Lennon New York City t-shirt. And then someone said, "Do you want to try that on?” or something. I just didn't want to act like I'm trying to be John Lennon, but then it turned out the photographer was great and got a cool shot. I can still picture it in my head, it was my favorite.

Generally speaking, are you a merry person?

Yes, I'm very merry. I'm very happy. I'm very positive. I'm a fan of things. Sometimes people say I'm too much of a fan on the show and then I'll watch a clip back and go, "Oof, it does seem like I'm doing too much." But I don't mean to do it, that's my genuine reaction. I have one of those jobs where every day it's something different. And there's a different guest, a different musical guest and a different way of attacking the interview. So I look forward to that every day.

I was going through old clips of yours and I found this one where you were being interviewed by Jiminy Glick, and he referred to you as "TV's late night little rapscallion, the giggle boy himself," and I was curious if you find all your guests to be very funny, or do you actually have to labor with some of them?

Most of my guests are in a good mood and pretty funny. John Mulaney was here yesterday, who's easy. He's funny. Keira Knightley was hilarious. People are in a good mood when they're on the show and they want to have fun. They're kind of loose, and they know that I'm pretty positive and the audience is ready for comedy. If you have a joke, usually the audience gets it. You don't have to explain it or there's usually no silence. When you tell a funny joke on my show, it lands.

How do you modulate between engaging with different kinds of celebrity? It must be surreal to go from Isabella Rossellini to the Rizzler.

After you do it for 15 years, maybe I'm just kind of getting used to it now, where I don't overthink it that much. But again, it's good to keep your brain moving and without the show, I probably wouldn't know half the people that are on it. I wouldn't really know what's going on in the news. So I really look forward to having my show, just to keep me knowing that like, ROSÉ has a new song out and it has half a billion streams.

How has the pace of late night shifted with TikTok?

That's an excellent question. I wish that our show could go more in the pace of the podcasting world. I think why that's grown is because people get more time to actually talk to somebody and do a real interview. When I talk to my guests, I get probably five to seven minutes every night, because we have so many guests, and you have to talk about their projects and stuff, but I'd love to talk to people for like, an hour and just go, "How's it going? What's going on?"

But I don't know if it can last as long, for me, because if I talk to someone for an hour, I don't know if I can have them back on in two months. What do we leave out? So if I just do seven-minute bursts, it leaves me more things to talk about. But now and then, I'd like to do a long-form interview, or just have someone I'm interested in. We have ROSÉ on today, and I'm very interested in seeing how she's handling all this. She's the biggest thing in the world right now.

Do you find that audiences have become more harsh?

I don't really pay attention to it, to be honest. At this point you know my character and you know where it's coming from. I would never want to do anything to make anyone upset or anything. But if something bothers someone, I'll confront them and say, “I'm sorry,” but I don't really read comments anymore, I'm over that phase of my career. I mean, I weirdly grew up with the internet. When I was on Saturday Night Live, we wrote a sketch that was cutting edge at the time and it was me vlogging from my dorm room and I remember people going like, "No one does this, and no one's gonna get this." I haven't watched it, I don't think it holds up, but I remember I wanted to be new and fresh, and the internet was new. Then you could see comments or people like you, or fan pages, and then you also start seeing negative comments, and you go, This is good for my brain. If you take the compliments, you have to take the hits as well. And so at this point, you just do what you think is right.

It feels like we’re in a weird place with fame, where the biggest names in media aren’t necessarily people you see in movie theaters or on TV. How do you try to cast a net wide enough to address Hollywood to Hot Ones to Hawk Tuah?

The fun thing about The Tonight Show is that it's for everyone. So many people watch the show, that it's beyond what you even think is the audience, [even] beyond America, with the internet now it's global. We're giant in India. So you really have to go with the times. You can't just keep talking about how you love yacht rock, it's gonna get old.

Christmas music is essentially vibes-based music. What is the mood you were setting out to create for this record?

The album is a peek into my brain of what I listen to music-wise. Because this took me, believe it or not, almost four years to make, just because I was going in after every Tonight Show and going to Electric Lady and trying to work with writers and producers, which I've never done before. What happened first was Michele Anthony from Universal Music said, "You should do an album, like 12 Days of Christmas Sweaters, like you do on your show, but you do 12 classic songs, have a band behind you and just sing the song." I recorded one, and it was just lame. It was like, Why am I doing this? I hope they destroyed the hard drive. We don't need this. The world doesn't need this. We have great singers out there, like Michael Bublé, Kelly Clarkson. They're all great, they can actually sing. This is not what I'm good at. So I'm like, "Do you mind if I just started doing novelty songs and comedy songs and even get a pop thing in there?" And they were like, "Yeah sure, go for it." And that's what kind of made it take longer as we started writing. It turns out I think we have 25 original songs or something.

I heard that you had to rewrite “Wrap Me Up” with Meghan Trainor because she initially thought it sounded like it was about condoms. What is your gauge for the amount of weird a Christmas song can tolerate?

I tried every single thing that I could so I'm like, "I think this could be a song." I originally recorded "Wrap It Up," it was my original thing. And [Meghan] thought it was about it... Of course, safe sex is great, but I don't think I need to acknowledge it for this album. So then she didn't really get back to me, but six months later she sent me this whole new version. So then we're like maybe it's about, "Hey, we said no gifts," because everyone always says that and then, of course, someone gets you the gift. I didn't know if the album was going to come out then or just the single, so we decided to do the single. I have such respect for artists out there. It's not easy, and I think the audience can tell if you spit it out. If I had that big band album, everyone would be like, What is going on, dude?

The only goal is fun.

How was working with American icons Weird Al and Dolly Parton?

For the Weird Al song [“New Year’s Eve Polka”], there's always these sad New Year's Eve songs. There's never any happy, fun New Year's Eve song. It's always Auld Lang Syne and stuff. So I go, What could be fun? Polka is always fun. There's never a polka that comes on and everyone starts crying. So I go, What if Weird Al would play the accordion on this? I'm a giant fan. It's because of Weird Al that I'm doing what I'm doing. We changed the lyrics and moved things around, and he added sound effects. And then he goes, "Is there gonna be a band on this?" So I asked The Roots. We all came together and we did it.

Dolly [Parton] did a holiday album, and she called me and said, "I'd love for you to be on the album." I go, "Oh my gosh, I'll do anything, but you want me to introduce you?" She goes, "No, I want you to sing with me." She sent me the song, and it's Mariah. And I go, "Dolly, there's no way. I can't hit these notes." And she's like, "Yeah, well, you can. We'll figure it out. I'll talk you through it." So when I was making my holiday project, I said that I'd love to do something with [her] again. I thought it'd be funny to put out a song that's like the song that comes out before Mariah. And she was like, “I love it. Let's do it.” And we did it. And then, of course, she outdid herself and she's just absolutely the most talented, amazing musician and legend, clearly. She also has a great sense of humor, and I just was so honored. That's one of the best, best things I ever did.

Her voice is insane on that track.

She took it to another level. I remember at one point we thought we were gonna get Harry Styles, and that's why the beginning is a little psychedelic. The intro is a bit too long for me. If I had to do it again, I would probably take the intro and just start with Dolly's voice. But it ended up in the right area. I'm so thankful and grateful. I can't even believe that it's out. Hopefully just put it on the background while they're decorating. And be inspired to not be afraid to do something silly and something that isn't cool. To put something out where the only goal is fun.