Although Diane owns over 100 Christmas CDs, somehow we add a couple more each Holiday Season. Amanda Shires For Christmas was recorded during a four-day heatwave in July 2021. According to Shires, the Nashville studio was decorated with sparkly decorations and the musicians wore Christmas hats to celebrate the spirit of a season.
I love Amanda Shires’ opening ballad ‘Magic Oooooooh’, where Shires trills: “It’s Christmas time in June”. This CD includes mostly original compositions (there are two covers, one with new lyrics). Some people say that Amanda Shires sounds a bit like Dolly Parton. Check out the video below and make your own judgement.
While Amanda Shires takes some risks with her Christmas songs, James Taylor plays it safe with A Christmas Album. Most of the songs are familiar favorites. Diane finds James Taylor’s voice soothing and pleasant, especially while we were decorating our Christmas Tree. If you’re looking for some agreeable Christmas music, here it is. What Christmas music are you listening to? GRADE: B (for both)
TRACK LIST:
| A1 | Amanda Shires , Featuring The McCrary Sisters– | Magic Ooooooh | 4:13 |
| A2 | Amanda Shires– | A Real Tree This Year | 3:15 |
| A3 | Amanda Shires , Featuring The McCrary Sisters– | Let’s Get Away | 3:21 |
| A4 | Amanda Shires– | Home To Me | 3:39 |
| A5 | Amanda Shires , Featuring The McCrary Sisters– | Blame It On The Mistletoe | 3:18 |
| B6 | Amanda Shires– | Slow Falling Snow | 3:39 |
| B7 | Amanda Shires– | What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? | 2:28 |
| B8 | Amanda Shires– | Silent Night | 4:13 |
| B9 | Amanda Shires , Featuring The McCrary Sisters– | Gone For Christmas | 3:52 |
| B10 | Amanda Shires– | Wish For You | 3:28 |
| B11 | Amanda Shires , Featuring Lawrence Rothman– | Always Christmas Around Here | 3:12 |
AA
TRACK LIST:
| Winter Wonderland | 3:36 | ||
| Go Tell It On The Mountain | 3:48 | ||
| In The Bleak Midwinter | 4:18 | ||
| Baby, It’s Cold Outside | 4:19 | ||
| Santa Claus Is Coming To Town | 2:58 | ||
| Jingle Bells | 3:55 | ||
| The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On The Open Fire) | 3:54 | ||
| Deck The Halls | 2:51 | ||
| Some Children See Him | 4:41 | ||
| Who Comes This Night | 4:17 | ||
| Auld Lang Syne | 3:41 |
Somehow I just this week discovered the Tony Bennett Christmas album (quite nice) and also realized I never picked up the Frank Sinatra holiday record which I’ll be looking for this weekend. A few nights ago I was listening to the classical station out of East Lansing over the radio in the bedroom and they played The Sixteen / Harry Christophers recording of Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols.’ I wasn’t getting a good signal but somehow the music sounded more ethereal with the background static and weird electronic ambience and blew me away so I ordered the CD which should hit the doorstep any day now along with their record of Medieval and Renaissance Christmas music which I ordered on a whim. Real Gone Music reissued the Arthur Fiedler / Boston Pops Christmas albums on one disc and I also grabbed that but am saving it for Christmas eve. Every year I think I have enough Christmas music but somehow manage to find a few more CDs I suddenly have to have.
Byron, we’re very much like you with regards to Christmas music. With over 100 Christmas CDs, you’d think we have plenty to listen to. But, each year a couple new Christmas CDs arrive at our home to delight us! I’m going to have to track down The Sixteen/Harry Christophers recording of Britten “A Ceremony of Carols.” You got me at “ethereal.”
Christmas isn’t Christmas in our house without listening at least once to Elvis’s Christmas album—that is a mainstay. But we have a large assortment of Christmas CDs, everything from choirs & carols to the off-beat to the popular favorites.
Deb, Diane’s favorite Christmas music CD is one of Johnny Mathis’s classics. We put our CD player on “Shuffle” and it creates a random mix of choirs and carols and off-beat Christmas music that lasts for hours!
Like you, I have a lot of Christmas cds and always buy more. This year the “new” ones (neither actually new, but new to me) were Stan Kenton, A MERRY CHRISTMAS!, large jazz orchestra, and the Watersons, A YORKSHIRE CHRISTMAS, very rustic British folk.
Well, that other comment wasn’t supposed to appear in two places; it wasn’t supposed to appear up here.
I put discs on shuffle as well. Once a disc goes in, it stays for six days, as a replace one in order every day. It means I only play a few dozen each year, but I mix in some favorites and lots of random ones — I keep them in boxes in chronological order of acquisition, start with one random one and then follow along in the box from there. Right now the player is full of stuff I downloaded onto disc in 2008 — two discs of things Amazon and iTunes offered (one free song each every day), Annie Haslam’s IT’S CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN TOO, and currently moving through the 5-disc 99 BEST CLASSICAL CHRISTMAS MUSIC
Jeff, Diane changes the shuffle discs every few days so like you we listen to a couple dozen Christmas CDs during the Holidays. No chronological order here: the mix of discs depends on Diane’s mood!
I guess “soothing” is a word for it. Soporific is another.
I can’t get over that Diane has over 100 Christmas CDs. I have….hmm, two that I know of.
A Christmas Gift for You, by Phil Spector, with his stable of performers (includes “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love)>
The Classic Christmas Album, by Earth, Wind & Fire.
I only listen to Christmas music when I am a captive audience in a restaurant or somewhere else it is playing.
Jeff, as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around, Diane starts playing Christmas music…lots of Christmas music. I have that Spector CD and the Earth, Wind & Fire CD…somewhere. But, as soon as Christmas is over, the Christmas CDs get stored until the next Thanksgiving.
I like “Blue Christmas” in both the Elvis and (especially) Porky Pig versions.
Jeff, I think Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” is his best Christmas song.
My parents unfailingly bought the annual Firestone and Columbia (“Great Songs of Christmas”) compilation LPs every December in the early/mid-’60s. Donna and I have several Christmas CDs in the closet that I used to play on my car’s CD deck going to and from work.
Fred, my parents played those GREAT SONGS OF CHRISTMAS albums, too! Another favorite from that era is A Charlie Brown Christmas, a studio album by Vince Guaraldi Trio from 1965.
I start listening to Christmas music a couple of days before Christmas.
Not much horizon expansion for me, just the same old stuff – my Christmas classics.
Beth, Diane always includes the Boston Pops CD in her Christmas mix just to get the “old stuff” Christmas classics!
Like you, I have a lot of Christmas cds and always buy more. This year the “new” ones (neither actually new, but new to me) were Stan Kenton, A MERRY CHRISTMAS!, large jazz orchestra, and the Watersons, A YORKSHIRE CHRISTMAS, very rustic British folk.
Jeff, I have some Stan Kenton but not the Christmas album. A YORKSHIRE CHRISTMAS sounds like fun!
I mostly harken back to the Weavers’ version of “Children, Go Where I Send Thee”…amused that the currently-circulating Johnny Cash and associates PBS pledge special from the ’70s includes a longer, variant version of the song.
And the Modern Jazz Quartet’s version of Bach.
I don’t believe I’ve ever bought/picked up an explicitly Xmas album, at least for myself.
And their version “Shalom Chaverim” for Channukah. Though I will sing “Good will/Towards All” rather than “Towards men”…
Todd, I’m partial to “O Holy Night.”
Todd, PBS does run a lot of “Specials” between Thanksgiving and Christmas as fund-raisers.
Oh, I know all too well. 17 years creating the records and getting the network “hard” and “soft” feed schedules out for TV GUIDE products and PBS.org.
Usually a couple more “pledge opportunities” over the year, particularly in the spring…
I’ll bet you don’t have the Christmas CD by the Mona Lisa Twins!
Bob, you win that bet! No Mona Lisa Twins in the Kelley Household!