Howdy and happy Monday!
If you’re anything like me, you love Christmas music but get sick of it pretty quickly. I don’t usually launch into listening Christmas music exclusively, instead opting to ~let it come to me~ a la supermarket background music and TV commercials. There are, however, a few instances where I do enjoy launching a playlist from previous years and jamming out; for instance, while decorating the tree or doing any other season-specific activities that call for the music to match the mood.
So today, I humbly offer to you: a collection of my ideal Christmas and Christmas-adjacent songs for the season. Minus the videos and lyrics because, frankly, I’m out of time.
I will, however, list my absolute favorites from this list:
The Vanguard Room’s A Lakeland Christmas, Vol. 1. My FRIENDS made this record of popular Christmas covers in 2019 and it’s still one of my favorite Christmas albums to play during the season. The Monday Mixtape playlist features “Santa Tell Me,” “River,” “Let It Snow,” and “Christmastime is Here” but you should do yourself a favor and listen to the album in its entirety. Thank me later.
“Alone on Christmas Day” by Phoenix ft. Bill Murray??? Need I say more?
“If We Make It Through December” by Phoebe Bridgers. Self-explanatory.
“Last Christmas” by Wham!, which may be my favorite Christmas song?? Haha. Is that crazy?
“Sleigh (with Monte Booker & Masego)” by Smino. I love unorthodox Christmas songs and I love Smino and Masego so this is a match made in heaven for me. Also that section from 1:15-1:21 gets me every time.
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Bahamas. If y’all aren’t listening to Afie Jurvanen what are you doing?? Dreamy vocals, dreamy guitar licks, dreamy vibes…it’s perfect.
“Blue Christmas” by Kevin Morby. Just a dreamy as ^, but with a punctuated feeling of moodiness (as it should). Blue! Blue! Blue! Blue Christmas!
“Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)” by the Ramones. More unorthodox Christmas music, this time by long-time legends.
If you haven’t followed the playlist on Spotify, you can find it HERE (or below, if you’re reading this in the Substack app or on your desktop).
As always, if you’re reading this and the playlist above ^ doesn’t match what I’m writing about in the rest of this post, you might be reading an old post or the playlist may need a few minutes to refresh. Archived tracks from past playlists will live on the Monday Mixtape Archive found here!
Hope you enjoy. Happy listening! 🎄
-Pam