Steverino
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That's great news regarding Andrea's full Christmas album! 20-Oct-2022 18:45:45
| CorrsClub Time: 25-Apr-2024 23:27:43 |
When Andrea's Christmas EP came out in 2020, I tried my darnedest to purchase it but without success: it was geo-blocked and just didn't become available in the U.S. until long after I had given up and the holidays had passed. I never bought it and simply listened to it on YouTube. Now I have purchased a signed edition so I can support Andrea's music as I have always wanted to do.
I recall feeling then that arrangements seemed perhaps not the most ebullient, but this was very apt for the year we had been through in 2020. I felt that Andrea's music had found an appropriate tone of peace and comfort in the face of loss and weariness. In writing the beloved Christmas song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin tapped into this same kind of feeling. Although the lyrics changed in the 1950's to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough," when the song came out in 1944 during World War II as part of Meet Me in St. Louis, the original lyrics were:
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now
It's significant that Andrea chooses to sing this original 1944 version of the lyrics.
I know there are those who aren't big fans of Christmas music, and I can appreciate that. For my own part, I have always enjoyed it, though I know that it seems that Christmas music starts being played earlier and earlier every year , so that, when Christmas does finally roll around, there understandably can be a bit of fatigue from it. Just the same, I grew up listening to classic Christmas albums - Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Vince Guaraldi, Mantovani, Carpenters, etc. - so it's part of my tradition during the season.
Over the past decade, a re-issue record label called Real Gone Music released a lot of this old music (https://realgonemusic.com/collections/christmas-music/christmas-music), and I was able to reclaim some of the music from long-lost vinyl LPs that played in my home when I was young. For me, it brings back good memories from a time when my grandparents were still around.
Living with six cats, I often don't put up a Christmas tree, but I always do play the music. I will be glad to add Andrea's album - this "courageous little fighter, incubated by COVID" - to the play rotation at my home at Christmas.
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