Monday, December 13, 2021

Personal Picks Episode Seventeen - We Need A Little Christmas

 


It's been quite a while since I posted one of these playlists. The reason being was I wanted to put more into them by adding a theme to discuss and going into the song choices a bit more. I'm hoping to get back into the rhythm as I really enjoyed putting this together. 

The Theme: Christmas

As for the theme, it is around the 14th December when I post this and this is my family's official date for starting the festive season (it's my sister's birthday). I was just going to post the link to last year's playlist but then felt like challenging myself to find new songs and not ones that are played on the radio often (if at all).  

The Songs

The list starts off mellow and then moves into the cheesey area so the song order is deliberate. I picked Sarah McLachlan and Kacey Musgraves because I like their voices and the songs are good. Musgraves I discovered through her collaboration with Troye Sivan so gave the song a listen when I saw her name. As I mentioned, one overall idea was picking covers / different versions of songs so as to be different from the usual radio picks. I like the songs Mistletoe and Wine and Stay Another Day (Stay Another Day only qualifies as it is a Christmas Number One but there isn't anything Christmasy about it). Anyway, I just looked to see if other artists had covered them. Delighted that Kylie had covered Stay Another Day (as part of a special edition of her Kylie Christmas album). I really like the songs Hard Candy Christmas and We Need A Little Christmas. I discovered both from creating last year's playlist so similarly looked to see if they were covered by other people. Happily, they were covered by two artists I enjoy, Cyndi Lauper and Sufjan Stevens. Both artists are back from last year. Stevens' song is from a different Christmas album than I picked from last year (Silver & Gold). Yes he's done more than one. Do You Hear What I Hear? appears as it was in the first Gremlins movie, which is unquestionably a Christmas movie. Moving to the cheese portion. Buck Owens' tune from my All Across America playlist was a lot of fun so I looked to see if he had any Christmas ones. He also has an entire album (Christmas With Buck Owens). I picked the one that was the most fun. Last year, I discovered Hanson, of MMMBop fame, also had a Christmas album, Snowed In, but I couldn't fit them in so I picked my favourite tune off of it for this year. Finally, Must Be Santa. Kinda funny family thing. My mum likes Bryan Adams and my dad likes Bob Dylan so here is Bryan doing a song that Bob did. (Bryan has a Christmas EP called Christmas EP and Dylan has an album called Christmas In The Heart). How may people have Christmas albums now? There must be money in it.

The playlist  (You can check out this playlist on Spotify).

1. Wintersong - Sarah McLachlan 

2. Christmas Makes Me Cry - Kacey Musgraves

3. Mistletoe and Wine - Michael Ball, Alfie Boe

4. Do You Hear What I Hear? - Johnny Mathis

5. Stay Another Day - Kylie Minogue

6. Hard Candy Christmas - Cyndi Lauper, Alison Krauss

7. We Need A Little Christmas - Sufjan Stevens 

8. Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy (Daddy Looked A Lot Like Him) - Buck Owens

9. Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Hanson

10. Must Be Santa - Bryan Adams

Recommendations:

Gremlins.

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