Darlene Love will never stop thinking of her holiday classic, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” At this time of year, she couldn't if she tried.
“The post office, grocery store, elevator,” she says with a laugh, listing a few locations where she keeps hearing the song. “It just feels funny that my song is in that many places at Christmastime.”
Her signature song, first released in 1963, is as set in the pantheon as such predecessors as Bing Crosby's “White Christmas” and such successors as Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Love sang “Christmas” for years on David Letterman 's late night show, which ended in 2015, and has since followed with appearances on “The View” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” where she will perform on Dec. 18, along with Steve Van Zandt and former Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer among others.
Interviewed at the Sony Music Entertainment offices just off Madison Square Park, the 84-year-old Love has a youthful, open-hearted spirit that makes you believe she could break out at any time into the joyous roar of “Christmas,” or “He’s a Rebel,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” and other showcases. Revered by generations of musicians, Love was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 and was among the singers featured two years later in the Oscar-winning documentary, “Twenty Feet from Stardom.”
She was born Darlene Wright in Los Angeles, a minister's daughter who had been performing in front of people for years before Phil Spector signed her up in 1962. He renamed her “Darlene Love” and launched her career as a lead and backing singer whose mighty mezzo-soprano was more than equal to the producer's booming orchestrations, what he called “little symphonies for the kids.”
When Spector decided to record an album of Christmas music, he featured Love on oldies (“White Christmas” and “Marshmallow World”) and the original composition that became her trademark: “Christmas” was conceived by Spector and one of the great songwriting teams of the era, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Love questioned the whole idea of a “rock n roll Christmas song,” but remembered a transcendent, exhausting session, and the challenge of making a summertime studio gathering feel like winter.
“What Phil Spector did was he went out and got Christmas lights and a Christmas tree and made it freezing cold in the studio,” she says. “I told him 'You can’t do that because that’s going to close up all our throats if you make it that cold in here.' So the only thing we had left were the lights and everybody was in a great mood.”
Love had a troubled relationship with Spector well before his mercurial personality turned lethal and he was convicted in 2009 for the murder of actor Lana Clarkson. (Spector died in prison in 2021). The producer infuriated Love soon after they began working together when he recorded her singing “He's Sure the Boy I Love” and, without telling her, released it as a single by another Spector act, the Crystals. In the 1990s, she sued Spector for unpaid royalties for various songs and received $250,000.
But during her interview, she spoke warmly of Spector, recalling how she would tease him about his hairpiece and his elevated shoes, or refuse to sing another take when she was sure she had done it right. Love was in her early 20s at the time but was married (her first of three), with a young son and found herself acting as elder sibling and protector for two teenagers who would become iconic in their own right — the producer's future wife, Ronnie Spector, then known as Ronnie Bennett; and the shy, but tough future wife of session man Sonny Bono, Cher.
As Cher wrote in her eponymous 2024 memoir, and Love confirms, Darlene Love was unafraid to challenge the men in the room. During breaks between sessions, she would go out for hamburgers across the street and bring Cher and Bennett with her, indifferent to the objections of their controlling boyfriends. “Come on, let’s go do this. Let’s go do this,” she remembered urging her friends. “I was always getting everybody in trouble.”
Love and Cher have worked together often. Cher sang backing vocals on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and Love has backed Cher on tour. A couple of years ago, Cher was recording a Christmas album and phoned Love, hoping she would join her on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” They grew up together in show business, but Love at first didn't recognize the famous voice on the other end of the connection.
“We talk to each other like maybe twice a year, and our careers went in totally and completely different avenues,” Love says. “So Cher calls and says, ‘Hey, doll.’ That’s what she calls me. She said, ‘This is Cher.’ And I said ‘Who?’ She said, ‘Cher, bitch!’ So I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is you. What’s up?’”
“A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector,” now regarded as a landmark, also features such long-running favorites as the Ronettes' “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Frosty the Snowman” and the Crystals' “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” But the album was originally famous for its tragic timing; the release date was Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “A Christmas Gift” would take years to fully catch on, while “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” only became a perennial on Letterman's show in the 1990s.
Love thinks “Christmas” endures because it's easy to sing (although try singing it like her) and because the words can be about anyone, a lover, “a sister who got lost, or somebody who passed.” Asked if there was another holiday song she'd like to perform as often as “Christmas,” she quickly answers, “Silent Night.”
“It's one of those songs that makes you feel good, and can make you feel sad, too,” she explained. “Because you're talking about night, and you're talking about a silent night, but a clear night, where you can see all the stars.
“And you never know how many stars are in the sky. Somewhere in the mountains where it’s black-dark. And it’s millions and millions and millions of stars. So when you say ‘Silent night, holy night,’ you’re talking about stars.”
FILE - Darlene Love performs during the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular in Boston on July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday it was taking steps to further ease sanctions on Russian oil as crude prices surge during the Iran war.
The agency said that it was granting a license that authorizes the delivery and sale of some sanctioned Russia crude oil and petroleum products for the next month.
Trump signaled earlier this week that he would take further action to ease restrictions on sanctioned oil to help make for the loss of oil flowing on the market because of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The move follows the Trump administration granting temporary permission for India to buy Russian oil.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s secretive new leader issued his first public statements Thursday, resolving to keep fighting, promising more pain for Gulf Arab states and threatening to open “other fronts” in a war that has already disrupted world energy supplies, the global economy and international travel.
The hard-line stance revealed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country's attacks were creating conditions for the Iranian population to topple the government.
“It is in your hands,” Netanyahu said at a news conference, addressing the Iranian people. “We are creating the optimal conditions for the fall of the regime.”
Since the start of the war, U.S. and Israeli strikes have targeted security checkpoints in Iran to undermine the government’s ability to suppress dissent, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, the U.S-based independent monitoring group known as ACLED.
Netanyahu denounced Khamenei as a “puppet of the Revolutionary Guards."
Khamenei is close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and is widely seen as even less compromising than his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His location is unknown, and he is likely a prime target for the U.S. and Israel.
Khamenei said in a statement read by a state TV news anchor that he was keeping a “file of revenge.” He did not appear on camera and has not been seen since his father and wife were killed in the war’s opening salvo, which also wounded him, according to an Iranian ambassador.
The war continued to escalate on its 13th day as oil prices spiraled up again to $100 per barrel, and stocks sank worldwide over fears that the conflict could drag on longer than hoped.
Iran has made clear it plans to keep up attacks on energy infrastructure across the region and use the effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the United States and Israel.
At a news conference Thursday, Iran’s ambassador to Tunisia, Mir Masoud Hosseinian, said Iranian naval forces “have established full control” over the strait and “carried out precise strikes in response to attacks on our oil infrastructure.” A fifth of the world’s traded oil flows through the waterway leading from the Persian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean.
“Global energy security is contingent on respect for Iran’s sovereignty,” he said.
He told The Associated Press the new supreme leader was wounded in the attack on his family’s home, but “it is not serious.” The hope is he will attend the massive, state-organized Eid prayer next week that his father traditionally led.
Hosseinian added that Iran’s strikes on Gulf nations have also been strategic.
“Even when we targeted hotels, we had precise information that they were hosting American and Israeli soldiers,” he said.
Khamenei called on Gulf Arabs to “shut down” U.S. bases in the region, saying protection promised by Washington was “nothing more than a lie.”
He also said Iran has studied “opening other fronts in which the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable” if the war continues. He did not elaborate, but Iran has been linked to previous attacks on U.S., Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post Thursday that ensuring Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon was a higher priority than soaring oil prices.
Hours later, Netanyahu announced Israeli attacks had killed a top Iranian nuclear scientist and hit others but gave few details.
Israel said earlier it struck a nuclear facility in Iran in recent days that it had destroyed with an airstrike in October 2024. Earlier this year, satellite photos raised concerns that Iran was working to restore the facility.
As Netanyahu spoke, the Israeli military said it had detected a new barrage of missiles launched from Iran toward Israel.
The U.S. military said American forces have now struck more than 6,000 targets since the operation against Iran began, including more than 30 minelaying vessels.
British officials said several U.S. personnel suffered minor injuries Wednesday night when drone strikes in northern Iraq hit a base in Irbil that houses both British and American troops.
And on Thursday in western Iraq, rescue efforts were underway after an American military refueling plane went down. U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said in a statement that the mishap involved two aircraft, including one that landed safely, and that the cause was not related to hostilities.
Israeli warplanes pummeled Lebanon, targeting even the busy heart of Beirut, in response to missiles from Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters launched into Israel. One strike hit in a neighborhood that is close to Lebanon’s parliament, United Nations offices and international embassies.
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said forces were targeting a “facility affiliated with Hezbollah.”
An Israeli strike also hit in the vicinity of Lebanon’s only public university, killing a professor and the director of the science faculty at the campus in Hadath, on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
An Israeli strike on a village in southern Lebanon killed nine people, including five children, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, adding that seven others were wounded. An AP photographer who visited the scene found several buildings flattened and widespread destruction, while rescue workers searched through the rubble.
Two other Israeli strikes on separate towns in southern Lebanon killed six more people, the health ministry said.
The U.N. refugee agency said up to 3.2 million people in Iran have been displaced by the ongoing war. It said most have fled from Tehran and other major cities toward the north of the country or rural areas. Around 800,000 people have been internally displaced in Lebanon, prompting fears of a humanitarian crisis.
Ben Mbarek reported from Tunis, Tunisia. El-Deeb reported from Beirut. Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers David Rising in Bangkok; Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; Natalie Melzer in Mitzpe Hila, Israel; Koral Saeed in Herzliya, Israel; Sally Abou AlJoud and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut; Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira and Ben Finley in Washington; and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
Israeli authorities inspect homes damaged by a projectile launched from Lebanon, in Haniel, central Israel, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Residents watch as smoke rises from a nearby building during an Israeli strike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A woman gathers belongings from her family's home after it was damaged by a projectile launched from Lebanon, in Haniel, central Israel, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
People inspect homes damaged by a projectile launched from Lebanon, in Haniel central Israel, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Workers inspect damage caused by a drone strike overnight at the Address Creek Harbour hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike in the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, late Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman sits on rubble across from a residential building damaged last Monday during the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Israeli authorities inspect homes damaged by a projectile launched from Lebanon, in Haniel central Israel, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Israel Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon speaks during a meeting of the Security Council at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A family enjoys the sunset with the view of the city skyline and Burj Khalifa, at Dubai Creek Harbour in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Oil tankers and cargo ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Smoke rises after an explosion at the airport in Irbil, Iraq, late Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A man inspects a car damaged in an Israeli airstrike at the Ramlet al-Baida public beach in Beirut, Lebanon, early Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
