“Gloria” by Hawk Nelson, Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Hawk Nelson released two Christmas EPs in the earlier part of their career, starting with 2005’s Gloria. The four-song EP featured two original songs with familiar choruses and two covers--the sacred “I Heard the Bells” and the secular “Last Chrismas.” The original songs, “Alleluia” and “Gloria” were also divided into sacred and secular. While all of the songs on the EP are interpreted with a mid-'00s emotion, the two original songs are especially emotionally charged. “Alleluia” is a song about the nativity that uses the tune of a liturgical chant for the chorus. “Gloria,” on the other hand is a cheesy Christmas love song that talks about Santa giving the speaker a girl for Christmas named Gloria. Singer Jason Dunn adds a lot of emotion into the first verse, which feels strange given that the song can’t be that serious. The song ultimately interpolates the chorus of the French carol, “Angels We Have Heard on High,” because the girl that the speaker wants for Christmas is named Gloria.
AS SANTA CAME AND WENT. Hawk Nelson’s Christmas songs were included on several compilations. In 2005, the band’s cover of “Last Christmas” appeared on Tooth & Nail Records’ Happy Christmas, Vol. 4. The Happy Christmas collections were the standard for Christian Rock and Christmas music in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, however, only the fourth volume is available on streaming services. There were five volumes released in the Happy Christmas series beginning in 1998 and concluding in 2010 with the fifth volume, to which Hawk Nelson contributed “The Chipmunk Song” (Christmas Don’t Be Late). Each Happy Christmas album encapsulated the artists at the center of the musical zeitgeist. In 1998, that meant ska, punk, electronica, and singer-songwriter with artists like The O.C. Supertones, The Dingees, Joy Electric, and Sarah Masen. In 2005, the record label was in its golden age as the forefront record in Christian Rock. Happy Christmas, Vol. 4 contains songs by Switchfoot, Emery, Anberlin, Copeland, Mae, and Hawk Nelson. The final installment contains many one-to-two album wonders in Tooth & Nail's catalog, except for Copeland, Hawk Nelson, and Demon Hunter.
MY PACKAGE NEVER CAME. In 2003, the prominent Christian record companies coordinated an effort to make a two-disc compilation of Christian Rock hits of the year, titled X2003. The compilation seemed to be a response to the WOW series in the Contemporary Christian series, which was a response to the Now That’s What I Call Music series. The next year, though, X2004 was slimmed down to a one-disc album, and more and more Tooth & Nail artists started taking up more tracks on the album every year until the project concluded with X2010. In 2006 and 2007, additional albums were released: X Worship 2006 and X Worship 2007, and in 2010, the final compilation was released: X Christmas. The merry compilation features new covers from Thousand Foot Krutch, FM Static, and Seventh Day Slumber and a new song by Capital Lights as well as songs songs already part of other projects. These include The Almost’s “Little Drummer Boy,” which made an appearance on their 2008 EP, No Gift to Bring; Anberlin’s (Christmas) “Baby Please Come Home” and Switchfoot’s “Evergreen” from Happy Christmas Volume 4; and today’s song “Gloria,” from Hawk Nelson’s 2005 EP. X Christmas doesn’t have any nostalgic value for me like Happy Christmas Volume 3 and Volume 4. Just as the golden age of Tooth & Nail came to an end in the late ‘00s it seems that Christian Rock also kind of ended with the collapse of the music industry that was based on physical sales. Something about the compilation didn’t translate to the post-Christian Rock ‘10s.
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