🎄 Holidays! What are your holiday favorites and recent holiday music purchases?

[Another Son]

If you celebrate Christmas and like Christmas music, which festive albums have you listened to so far this year..... or haven't you started yet?

I began around December 1st, as I've been doing a lot of outside-hours work at my desk, at home.

My Christmas albums so far this year have been:-

Aled Jones' 'The Christmas Album';

Ella Fitzgerald's 'Christmas';

Andrea Bocelli's 'My Christmas';

Bryn Terfel's 'Carols & Christmas Songs';

Aaron Neville's 'Soulful Christmas';

The Platters' 'Christmas With the Platters';

Maureen McGovern's 'Christmas With';

Josh Groban's 'Noel';

Judith Durham's 'For Christmas With Love';

Johnny Mathis' 'For Christmas';

Jose Carreras' 'Merry Christmas';

and a re-sequenced playlist of selections from the two Christmas albums by Carpenters.

I'm surprised that I haven't put on any King's College Choir Cambridge or King's Singers yet. That's coming.

I would recommend all of the above but I will probably cut Jose and Josh from my future listens.

The album that I've listened to most times this year is 'The Christmas Album', by Aled Jones.

Which albums would other people recommend and which have been on your playlists?

 

[Nemily]

If you celebrate Christmas and like Christmas music, which festive albums have you listened to so far this year..... or haven't you started yet?
Which albums would other people recommend and which have been on your playlists?

Christmas Portrait - Carpenters
An Old Fashioned Christmas - Carpenters
Christmas Album - Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
The Christmas Wish - Herb Alpert
Home for Christmas - Amy Grant
A Christmas Festival - Arthur Fielder & Boston Pops Orchestra
A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector -Various Artists
The Ventures - The Ventures Christmas Albums

 

[Rudy]

I see a few mentions of the Phil Spector album. Hey! Merry Christmas! by The Mavericks is in a similar "wall of sound" style and they even cover "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)." It's a recent album (2018?) yet has a strong retro vibe to it.



The interesting thing is that this was a blind purchase--I'd never owned anything by the Mavs, saw it for sale cheap (vinyl), and grabbed it for something different. The first track made it a favorite right out of the gate.

 

[Rudy]

This link will list all of our Holidazed music threads:

The Music Forum

All music discussions are welcome here...A&M or not!

forum.amcorner.com

 

[martin]

I really love Christmas music, I have actually arranged and produced about a dozen myself, and I own about 200 Christmas albums, but these are ten of my favourites:
Herb & the TJB: Christmas Album
Singers Unlimited: Christmas
Oscar Peterson: An Oscar Peterson Christmas
David Foster: The Christmas Album
Herb Alpert: The Christmas Wish
Dave Koz: A Smooth Jazz Christmas
Carpenters: Christmas Portrait
Chicago: Chicago 25
James Last: Weihnachten und James Last (Christmas and James Last)
Diana Krall: Christmas Songs

- greetings from the cold and snowy north -
Martin

 

[Rudy]

and a re-sequenced playlist of selections from the two Christmas albums by Carpenters.

I haven't played it in many years, but I made a CD that combined all of KC's vocal tracks into one album. The only thing that didn't fit was one instrumental passage from one of the songs from Old Fashioned Xmas that snuck into one of the segues (which I had no control over). The downfall was having to use that remastering with all the digital reverb poured on it, so that's a large reason why I couldn't listen to it often. I grew up playing the original Xmas Portrait LP, so I'm very set on how I like to hear it.