2018 NEW & NOTEWORTHY CHRISTMAS ALBUMS

It’s no secret, I’m a total Christmas music junkie. It used to be a weird thing once upon a time, but with people starting to play Christmas music a few days after Halloween now, I’m not looked at as the weirdo I once was. And with music being as accessible as it is now, finding new and different Christmas albums isn’t as challenging as it once was.

My brother and I used to rummage through rows and rows of CDs at Best Buy. And then we started looking though pages and pages of Christmas albums on Amazon. Anything worthy we scored was brought to Thanksgiving dinner and shown off with great pride. But now with iTunes, it’s becoming easier to do deeper searches for Christmas albums that aren’t in the pop charts. For example, this year I found a great jazz group called B3 Kings  with some fantastic arrangements, and this guy Andrew McAuley with a new take on the Charlie Brown Christmas music. But those aren’t current albums. I wanted to scour the internet to find what good and unique albums that were released this year.

There are heaps of pop singer Christmas albums, smooth jazz, and reworked compilations with Frank Sinatra released every year. It’s usually all the same stuff. The same arrangements of the same songs, just with a different singer. Once in a while, someone does something unique and catchy enough that and it enters the Christmas music collective that we will come to enjoy (or be annoyed with) for years to come.

Ingrid Michaelson, Jessie J, Eric Clapton, Pentatonix, Lauren Daigle, Diana Ross, William Shatner(!?) and even The Monkees released Christmas albums this year. Most of these are decent. They are nice, but not awesome. I kept poking around and these are my top releases for the 2018 season. Continue reading “2018 NEW & NOTEWORTHY CHRISTMAS ALBUMS”

TOP 10 NOT-SO-TYPICAL CHRISTMAS ALBUMS

Now that Thanksgiving is over and we are well into December, I have dropped my Grinchy attitude and have full-on embraced the Christmas spirit. Well, at least I’ve been jamming the Christmas tunes. In my last Scroogy post, I confessed my weirdo-ness and love for Christmas music. And in the spirit of Christmas I thought I’d share my top 10 favorite albums (in no particular order) that you’ve maybe never heard of. I cherish the Charlie Brown Christmas, and love Harry Connick Jr., Frank Sinatra, Mariah Carey and all the other favorites you’re familiar with, but they won’t be on this list. There are tons of weird and ridiculous albums out there, but these are a few unique ones that I genuinely enjoy and are part of our family holiday soundtrack.

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AFTERNOON CONCERTS

IMG_8785I love nothing more than a random, unexpected, unprompted rock concert put on by the one and only, captivating, charismatic Ellie!

Her free concerts are truly a treat. You never know when they’ll break out, so when they do, I’m all ears.

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OH SWEET MUSIC

Children’s music. Ugh. I’m trying to be open minded and accept it as part of my life for Ellie’s sake, but man, I’m having a hard time.

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THE MUSIC NEVER STOPS

When my neighbor Joe and I started listening to music together it was just by chance. I think he asked me to drive him to CVS once and when I helped him bring in the groceries he asked if I wanted to stay for a bit. We got talking about jazz and such. We were both rattling off different artists, and then I asked if he had time to listen to a few things. Well, that random weekday evening turned into our first listening night which then led to a friendship that lasted a long time.

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