Christmas and Crisis

With a global pandemic that keeps us at a distance from each other, this year will certainly be a different Christmas.

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Otis Gibbs - Once I Dreamed of Christmas
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Otis Gibbs – Once I Dreamed of Christmas

To some extent, nearly all of the classic Tin Pan Alley Christmas songs are about escape.

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The Top 10 Christmas Albums of 2019

Our annual roundup of the best tracks of the year is back! Finding the top 10 Christmas albums of 2019 was certainly less difficult than last time – this year has had a breadth of

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Angela Morley, her Orchestra and Chorus – Christmas by the Fireside
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Angela Morley, her Orchestra and Chorus – Christmas by the Fireside

For decades, as late as the sixties and in some cases the seventies, the most popular radio stations in both the US and UK were dedicated to a genre that is practically unheard tod

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Eddie Kamae and the Sons of Hawaii – Christmas Time

By 1978, the Hawaiʻian folk revival was slowly losing the immense, culturally impactful steam it had half a decade earlier.

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Kate and Anna McGarrigle – The McGarrigle Christmas Hour

In the late 19th century, before radios and phonographs became ubiquitous, the music industry was dominated by sheet music publishers. There were two ways to hear new music.

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Jessye Norman – Christmastide

The late, great Jessye Norman, who passed away in September this year at the age of 74, is far from the only opera singer to release a Christmas album.

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Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs
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Charles Brown – Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs

Bells will be ringing at the start of Charles Brown’s soulful Sings Christmas Songs album. What follows is an unhurried collection of non-standard R&B Christmas tunes.

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December 1944. A choir sings for the American Troops in London during a Christmas concert. Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

Considering the Classical

Christmas music has weaved its way through much of western music history like a red ribbon, keeping the light in dark winter months from medieval Christian sects to the shiniest ne

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Jerry Barnes – The New Born King

Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine an album being released a different year than it came out, because it’s so much of its time.

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