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Filtering by Tag: Sufjan Stevens

Last Christmas? Wherein I Wonder Where the New Christmas Songs At

Chris Klimek

Remember Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron's brilliant dystopian sci-fi movie about a worldwide pandemic of absolute infertility, wherein the youngest person on Earth is 19 years old?

Well, the youngest Christmas song to be promoted the rarefied rank of a standard -- Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" -- turns 19 this year. If you think Hollywood has a remake problem, take a look at the holiday charts on Billboard or iTunes. Our pop stars still write new Christmas songs, but we're not embracing them.

In a new essay for Slate, I scratch my chin over when and how the secular seasonal songbook, a living document until a couple a decades ago, came to be locked down tighter than Santa's workshop. 

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categories music
tags Christmas, Slate, album covers, yuletunes, Paul McCartney, Run DMC, Wham!, Sufjan Stevens, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, Mary J. Blige, Phil Spector

There Is No Dignified Way to say "Christmas Unicorn": Sufjan Stevens at the 9:30 Club

Chris Klimek

My review of Sufjan Stevens' "Christmess Sing-a-Long" -- or to use its full, formal designation, the Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice -- at the 9:30 Club Saturday night appears  in today's Washington Post.

I'm a big admirer of Stevens' giddy, reverent, odd Christmas EPs, installments 6-10 of which have just been released in the Silver & Gold boxed set. I tried to talk to him for my yulemix essay that ran in the paper yesterday. I've used some of his songs on the mix every year. Alas, his label told me he isn't giving interviews. Humbug.

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categories music
tags concerts, Sufjan Stevens, Christmas, Washington Post, 9:30 Club

Twelve Songs of Christmas

Chris Klimek

I was asked to provide a sidebar for my Washington Post essay (in today's Sunday Style insert, with Helen Mirren on the cover, which actually came out Friday) about making my annual yulemix. We didn't have room for my brief rationales for choosing the Twelve Songs of Christmas that I did, so I'm posting it here. Bow your heads and tremble before the Twelve Songs of Christmas!

(Not the twelve songs, as if there could be such a thing. Merely a dozen yule-sides that ring my Christmas bell, presented chronologically.)

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categories music
tags The Muppets, Rotary Connection, Merle Haggard, yulemixes, The Beach Boys, Christmas, The New Pornographers, yuletunes, Sufjan Stevens, Stephen Colbert, Frank Sinatra, Run DMC, Darlene Love, Elvis Costello, She & Him, Washington Post, Phil Spector, James Brown, Rufus Thomas