MIXTAPE
Sweet Secret Peace
A Christmas mixtape
Christmas songs that seemed simple in my youth now carry inflections of complex feelings many of us experience during the Christmas season: nostalgia and contentment, longing and melancholy. The best songs reflect this complexity, or, at least, compliment each other in a carefully-crafted playlist that tries.
The genre of Christmas music is rife with artists at or past thier apex putting out half-assed covers as some kind of entitled milestone, sometimes disguising a last-ditch attempt at reviving fan interest and generating sales.
Worse yet is that these schmalzy, simplistic Christmas albums sell in millions, terrorizing your eardrums at every retail establishment. I had always wondered “who buys this stuff?” when I used to look at the charts. I witnessed it firsthand when I worked at a music store and saw Celine Dion flying off the shelf.
Don’t get me wrong, there is still room for some loungy, croony stuff in my heart. Aside from Hallowe’en, Christmas can be campy and cheesy. Just more on the vanilla…
