Z's Music Corner - Christmas Edition

[sirhugs]

Tired of Christmas music already

 

[Z_TheWriter]

This is maybe the best rendition of Hallelujah around:

I still find it hard to beat Jeff Buckley. This one is quite interesting though.
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Spellwork, by Austra.

Austra is great!
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Tired of Christmas music already

That's fair. I do try to find things which are non-traditional, or people might not have heard before - hence also the Danish ones. But I get why it's not for everyone regardless.
I am still gonna try to finish the challenge I set of 25 Christmas songs which I can stand myself, though.

 

[Off_base]

 

[alohadave]

 

[cw5523729]

@AG31

 

[AG31]

@AG31

 

[YmaOHyd]

Don't have time to write a mini-essay about the music, so I'll give you Joe Satriani before the Hair Loss Monster got him plus a 19-year old Jennifer Connelly.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

 

[KTrout23]

 

[Z_TheWriter]

White Wine in The Sun by Tim Minchin

Yes this is a Christmas song - he's Australian. Aside from that, I kinda feel like Tim speaks for himself.

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Anyone know why the hell Redneck Christmas involves "10 o' Copenhagen" (the Danish capital)?

 

[Off_base]

Not a Christmas song:

This funny parody was born from the little known, but very real, behind the scenes feud between male country music artists, as to who is more genuine "country".

The goal is to be seen as an authentic country boy who grew up ranching, and is true to his lyrics and music, as opposed to a city boy, who's just faking it (aka, all hat and no horse).

 

[alohadave]

 

[YmaOHyd]

Anyone know why the hell Redneck Christmas involves "10 o' Copenhagen" (the Danish capital)?

Copenhagen is a popular brand of chewing tobacco in the US.
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Don't need to do much explanatory writing about this because the video includes the liner notes and all the background stuff from the artist. The is the first track of Arjen Lucassen's album The Source, the latest in his Ayreon project. Ayreon is a long-running series of metal/prog concept-operas. The Source goes back to the beginning of the story: the rise of artificial intelligence and self-replicating machines and the flight of the Forever. The album as a piece of storytelling is pretty uneven, but musically it's immense. It includes a passage with the lyrics:

01110100
01110010
01110101
01110011
01110100
01010100
01001000
...that somehow manages to be really interesting melodically and in arrangement. That passage is followed by a lovely bluesy groove.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Low Down Dirty Christmas by Playing For Change

Playing For Change is a project whose mission is to connect the world through music. They travel the world, meeting musicians - mostly street musicians - in different countries. They record each person contributing to a song, then edit and add that to what the next has in their headphones when they record. This created some very interesting pieces where the song was played by maybe a dozen musicians from different countries who had never met. But as you can see in this one, some of the musicians also traveled to meet each other, played concerts together and recorded songs like this one.

They eventually created the Playing For Change Foundation which builds music and art schools for children around the world - 15 so far.

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Copenhagen is a popular brand of chewing tobacco in the US.

Interesting, and a bit weird. From what I can find it has no relation whatsoever to Denmark, which seems strange.

The is the first track of Arjen Lucassen's album The Source, [...]

Holy shit this is amazing!
I was gonna say that stylistically it reminds me a bit of Symphony X but yeah, their lead singer is in it

 

[Off_base]

Not a Christmas song

Disclaimer:
This song is so country that even country people say, "damn, that's twangy"

Rainy night in Georgia
Kentucky Rain
Here comes that rainy day feeling again
Blue eyes crying in the early morning rain
They go on and on
There's no two the same
It would be easy to blame
All these songs about rain 🌧

 

[alohadave]

Auli, a Latvian drum and bagpipe group, with an absolute banger of a song.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Wishing you the warmest New Wave greetings this holiday season.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

A little more traditional...

 

[stickygirl]

Recorded when I was a wee small thing, but simply the best damn live recording ( okay maybe Queen @ LiveAid ). I keep coming back to this. Tori Amos - Precious Things.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Interesting, and a bit weird. From what I can find it has no relation whatsoever to Denmark, which seems strange.

It was named, I think, to contrast Northern European quality and familiarity with American exoticism, which makes more sense if you remember the brand started in 1822 and competed with Red Man and Beech-Nut.

Holy shit this is amazing!
I was gonna say that stylistically it reminds me a bit of Symphony X but yeah, their lead singer is in it

As a guest vocalist, yeah. He's on The Source and The Universal Migrator Pt 2: Flight of the Universal Migrator. Arjen is pretty great at casting his guests. There's a series of videos he made on Youtube about casting The Human Equation, which I think is actually a perfect album.
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Surprise country-western gospel music in Swahili!

 

[Areala-chan]

My favorite Christmas song of all time:

No, I'm not kidding. This song is fucking beautiful.

 

[stickygirl]

My favorite Christmas song of all time:

No, I'm not kidding. This song is fucking beautiful.

Against my expectations, yes - you're right! How the hell did you find this?!

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Cool Jul from Pyrus: Alletiders Jul

In Denmark (and the rest of the Nordics), we have a type of Christmas TV show with 24 episodes, one televised each evening from December 1st through 24th - which is the primary day we celebrate Christmas. Every year, there will be several across channels, some new, some returning classics. We call them simply 'Julekalender' - 'Christmas Calendar'.

These are many and varied shows, mostly aimed at children, but often enjoyed by adults - a couple are even primarily for an older audience. Some are about normal people's lives in December, some about their interactions with the more supernatural aspects of the season. There's one about two children finding a way into Valhalla during December. One about three anthropomorphic animals going on a mission to Greenland to find the missing Santa Claus. One is about a girl finding a time machine and having adventures with young teen Jesus.

The show this is from is about Christmas elves living in the Royal Danish Archives. They use magic to enter historical books in order to have conversations, or just fun, with figures from Danish history. But something goes wrong with a spell, suddenly Christmas has vanished from all of the history books, and a mysterious girl with amnesia has appeared in the archives.

The titular elf, Pyrus, singing this song is tired of Christmas always being the same, always so traditional. He wants it to be more "cool".

 

[Areala-chan]

Against my expectations, yes - you're right! How the hell did you find this?!

I've had this album for basically as long as I've been alive. In 1979, this was an hour-long Christmas special broadcast on television here in the US, and my parents loved the music so much that my mom bought the record, and I now have my own copy of it, both on vinyl and on CD. It's one of the few Christmas albums I can listen to without feeling homicidal (I work in retail, so the day after Thanksgiving starts the non-stop Christmas music blitz in our store).

Anyone interested in seeing the full special can watch it here. It's really cute, the Muppet covers of the various standards are a lot of fun, and there are a few other songs that John Denver sings solo, or with minimal accompaniment, that are just as beautiful and enjoyable as Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

Disclaimer:
This song is so country that even country people say, "damn, that's twangy"

Hearing his voice do that almost hurts.
Good song though. More piano solo please Mr. Allan.
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A little more traditional...

Ok, this is gonna sound weird...
They're obviously very talented. But does anyone else find the visuals for this... vaguely scary?
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Surprise country-western gospel music in Swahili!

Not my style normally, but it doesn't matter, this man is so happy he just carries you with him anyway.
Also he can't end a song to save his life!
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Anyone interested in seeing the full special can watch it here. It's really cute, the Muppet covers of the various standards are a lot of fun, and there are a few other songs that John Denver sings solo, or with minimal accompaniment, that are just as beautiful and enjoyable as Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913.

Gonna save this for when we get closer to Christmas. Thank you