Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' "I'll Be Home for Christmas"

Last year, while listening to 20th Century Masters - The Christmas Collection: The Best of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, I noticed that their version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" is unique in how it renders a phrase.  In all of the other versions of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" in my music collection, the lines are "Christmas Eve will find me / Where the love light gleams."  In Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' version, however, the grammatical number is changed so that instead of "the love light gleams" it's "the love lights gleam."

Because of this change (the lack of the S, specifically), the rhyme between "Christmas Eve will find me / Where the love lights gleam" and "I'll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams" isn't as exact, although it certainly doesn't become a slant rhyme or anything like that.

Despite that, I prefer the plural "love lights."  The singular "love light" casts "I'll Be Home for Christmas" as something like a love song, but the plural "love lights" merely describes someone's endeavour to be with his family on Christmas.  The focus there is on familial love rather than romantic love, and that seems more appropriate for a holiday.

Carpenters' Christmas Portrait

I didn't listen to the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait until later this year, so this post about a couple songs on it is going up after Christmas.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

I heard this on the radio (which reminded me that I hadn't listened to the album yet this year), and I noticed three things that I wanted to write about, but after looking into them, only one turned out to be viable:  the "star" in "Hang your shining star above the highest bough" is just a half-step above the "bough," so pitch-wise, the "star" is "above the highest bough."  The "star" is sung to an A, and the "bough" to a G#.

"I'll Be Home for Christmas"

The Carpenters' version starts with a couplet that I haven't heard in any other version.  It's:

I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back, I promise you

and then it goes into "I'll be home for Christmas / You can count on me...."

There's a grammatical ambiguity with "even more than I usually do," specifically what it's referring to.  It could be either "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [dream about it]" or "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [love it]."  Either parsing is valid, and it could be understood either way.