Stocking Stuffers - 5 Songs New This Year
5 new songs to play while you’re stuffing stockings…
I’ve spent the last few days listening to 11 different new Christmas albums that national critics said were good. A couple of observations: the artists that put these albums out this year seem to have spent more time on them than their colleagues did in the past, with new creative new arrangements of old tunes and a good chunk of original songs.
My only complaint is that the discs seem to be getting more Christmas adjacent – love songs or breakup songs set around Christmastime – and less about Christmas. I guess this makes sense. If half of the US no longer celebrates this as a religious holiday, that’s bound to happen.
That said, there are some really good songs among the albums. Here are five I think you should consider adding to your Christmas play list.
“Oh Holy Night,” Samara Joy and the McLendon Family -- Samara Joy (McLendon) may have just won a “Best New Artist” Grammy, and she may be only 24, but she sounds like a 40-year-old Sarah Vaughan at the peak of her power. There are at least three stop-the-car remarkable cuts on her new Christmas album. To meet her and her voice, try “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me.” But to meet her family and get some sense of where that voice comes from, I like the performance she does with her Dad (a gospel singer) on “Christmas Song,” or, my selection here, the cut she does with her dad, uncle and cousins of “Oh Holy Night.” If you grew up (like I did) with the classical version of the song, this will take some adjustment, but I think you may end up appreciating the song in a new way. And see if you don’t agree that the harmony is even richer because all the voices are related.
Sabrina Carpenter’s strangely affecting song imagines a grown-up Cindy Lou, who stole her man.
“Cindy Lou Who” – Sabrina Carpenter – This one imagines Dr. Seuss’s adorable baby Cindy Lou Who a few years later, as a grown-up, man-stealing Jolene. Sabrina, another gifted 24-year-old, gives a plaintive, breathless, defeated performance – “the snow’s gonna fall and the tree’s gonna glisten/And I’m going puke at the thought of you kissin’” the boy she loves. But what can she do? Who could top Cindy Lou Who?
“Deck the Halls” – Brandy – You’ve never heard “Jingle Bells” or “Deck the Halls” like you will on Brandy’s new Christmas album. The tune for “Deck the Halls” has disappeared; the lyrics reappear in a soulful slow jam that makes for a fun alternative tune for Christmas.
“Home,” Cher and Michael Bublé -- If 77-year-old Dolly Parton can do a rock album, there’s no logical reason 77-year-old Cher can’t do a Christmas album. A lot of the songs on the album are a little strange – is she really going for another top-40 hit with “DJ Play A Christmas Song”? – but this song with Michael Bublé, about the ache of missing home, strips away the pop bob and auto-tune and focuses in on a guitar and two voices. Who’da thunk this pairing would work? Well, Cher, apparently. And she is right.
What would happen if your vixen vanished like a comet on Christmas?
“Reindeer” – Jon Pardi – A lot of the songs on Pardi’s first Christmas album are fun kick-it honkytonks – think KC lights; jacked-up trucks and beer for Santa. Buried among all those, “Reindeer” is a lyrical tour de farce Gershwin would have been happy to write. Imagine a song that puns on every reindeer name (“she was my tiny dancer now she’s prancing away/not even Cupid could’ve made that vixen stay,” etc.) while still managing to tell a real story of a painful lost relationship: “it might be a white Christmas, but all this snow just feels like rain, dear.” A must for your country Christmas collection.
I hope you’ll spend some time with these new songs and albums, their fun and warmth before the end of the year. 2024 is likely to be a rancorous year in America as a bitter election cranks up. We’ll need a little Christmas then.
Notes:
Christmas declining as religious holiday: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/12/12/americans-say-religious-aspects-of-christmas-are-declining-in-public-life/#:~:text=Currently%2C%2055%25%20of%20U.S.%20adults,religious%20and%20a%20cultural%20occasion.