"All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Anchor & Braille, Saturday, December 4, 2021
Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
"I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I. Don't want a lot for Christmas." *struggles to change the radio dial amid gridlocked holiday traffic* "There's just one thing I need" *hurry up with my damn latte! I think I'm going to die. Why the hell is Starbucks playing Christmas music mid-October?* "I don't care about the presents" *internal Elaine monologue 'I think I'm going to die in this department store. Ma'am, why must you spray the perfume so close to my face. I can't breath! What the earth begins to shake and we're stuck in here forever underneath mannequins and holiday shoppers and that damn Mariah Carey song stuck on repeat?'* "Underneath the Christmas tree" "No" *raising a strict finger to students who should be studying in the back* "Not before Thanksgiving." "I just want you for my own/ More than you could ever know." Every year Christmas music get earlier and earlier. "Make my dreams come true." Corporate America wants to put us in credit card debt. "All I want for Christmas" Call me Scrooge, but I'd like to go back to childhood when Christmases were magical. "Is" If only we could go back in time to say, 199~ "You~~~~~~~~~" That's it! 1992! before this song ruled the world.
ALL THE LIGHTS ARE SHINING EVERYWHERE. Last Christmas, Stephen Christian recorded his daughter's favorite Christmas song, releasing it as an Anchor & Braille song. All of those emotions listed above are my feelings about Mariah Carey's 1994 hit, "21st Century 'White Christmas.'" Overplayed, overrated, but more contagious than the Omicron variant and extremely meme-able. We can wear our earplugs into stores, we can blast the latest Taylor Swift or Adele albums in our noise-cancelling AirPods Pro, but the infection rate is close to 100% that you will have this song stuck in your head at some point during the holiday season. I was stricken by the bug today when I turned on A Very Tooth & Nail Christmas on Apple Music. Try as I might, Mae's "Carol of the Bells" or Copeland's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and not even Anberlin's "Baby Please Come Home" stuck in my head as I stepped out for lunch this afternoon. It's the Christmas season, so I wondered how this song would fit into my playlist this year? I wondered how Christmas music would fit in or if it would, this year. I thought about how un-Christmasy this year feels. And then it struck. The ear-virus didn't come in the form of Michael Buble, Ariana Grande, or Justin Bieber (thank God!). It didn't come in the hilarious mashup of the isolated vocals of Radiohead's "Creep" surrounded by the festive sleigh-bells and outrageous piano and back-up singers of "All I Want for Christmas Is You." It wasn't the pretty-good-but-not-great House of Heroes cover. It didn't come by seeing a meme about the song. Instead it came from one of my favorite singers doing a slowed-down rendition, taking the energy of Carey down to be a Christmas song for the exhausted rest of us.
I DON'T NEED TO HANG MY STOCKING. Am I being too harsh on the holiday classic? Critics loved the song when it came out. If I were writing a blog in 1994, maybe I would have appreciated the musical elements--the throwback to old Christmas songs, the unique chords, the imitation of a wind-up Christmas music box--but in 2021, I'm too desensitized to whatever musical point Carey was trying to make. To me, Christmas music, the more traditional the better. There is something so much more magical about a small church singing on a snowy evening a hymn from the 1400s than Bing Crosby singing in the '40s. When I was growing up, several CCM Christmas albums captured an old-time Christmas--whether it was Michael W. Smith's Christmastime or the artists who sang on the City on a Hill Christmas project. There was something about the 20th century Christmas songs that just sounded like shopping. And they were done to death--disco, punk, soul, pick a genre. My old soul, though, has to cope with a commercialized holiday, so Anchor & Braille is as good a place as ever to start. December's playlist isn't exclusively Christmas songs and won't be from here on out, but as the season picks up, I guess we should address the drop in temperature, the new flavors at Starbucks, the decorations at the department stores, the new specials on Netflix--even if it all seems a little forced.
When I was a Christian teenager, a book started circulating in my church youth group. Joshua Harris wrote about youth with wisdom and authority that seemed logical and categorical for every situation to the young women who read I Kissed Dating Goodbye . The book’s thesis argued that dating was a worldly alternative to the more purposeful Christian concept of courtship. Dating fueled erotic passions, which must be saved for a heterosexual marriage. Dating is casual, even preteens dates. Courtship was about vetting a marriage partner and would happen in the late teen years or early adulthood. YOU THINK I'M PRETTY WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP ON . Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye was part of a movement I’ve written about a lot: purity culture. How much this movement influenced young Katy Hudson, a pastor’s daughter in Southern California, touring with a slew of Christian rockers on the heels of her debut, self-titled album , I can only speculate what went through the 17-year-old star’s
On April 8th, people from around the world crowded the path of a rare total solar eclipse that spanned from central Mexico to Newfoundland. The celestial event lasted at most 4 minutes and 28 seconds. In the eclipse's direct path, businesses charged excessive rates for tourists to stay, dine, and enjoy themselves before and after the short main event. Many recall the 2017 total eclipse when then-President Trump looked directly at the sun without protective glasses, leaving experts aghast. As the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses were less than seven years apart, why the hype and international travel? While the two solar eclipses happened only seven years apart, the last total eclipse before 2017 in the contiguous fifty states was on March 7, 1970, and the next total solar eclipse after 2024 is not until 2044, but only be visible in the north-midwestern states around sunset. I SEE THE NIGHT SLIPPING OVER. The cosmic phenomenon of the sun being blocked by the sun’s light being block
Capitalizing on the pop-punk sound of the time Tooth & Nail signed Search the City , and they released their first album A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It in 2008. The band played at Tooth & Nail Day at Cornerstone that year and produced several radio singles from the radio-friendly album. Tongue-in-cheek lyrics in songs like " Son of a Gun " and " Ambulance Chaser " lyrically could connect this Detroit-based band with the likes of a clean-lyriced Blink-182 , Angels or Airwaves , or Relient K . Five years after Fire , the band reformed with a new drummer, bassist, and vocalist, 21-year-old Travis Bobier , who was much younger than the other band members. The 2012 album Flight was very similar to Fire, with Bobier's vocal performance on the album of high-register, energetic emo sound like original singer Josh Frost . YOU HAVE A PLACE TO CALL YOUR OWN THAT NO ONE CAN EVERY TAKE FROM YOU. The opening track of Flight , " My Secrets Have Secr
Comments
Post a Comment