How quickly are the weeks going! Only just over a week until Christmas, which means I have just four more of this year’s Advent Countdown selections to play for you. Today’s set is another mixed bunch, including three that I have played before and two making their debut. One is a version of a carol, two are seasonal rather than ‘Christmassy,’ and there are a couple of Christmas favourites in there too, though not in versions you would know. Let’s get going!

The first three of today’s tunes are the ones making return visits. I’m starting with one that I have played several times before, a Christmas Carol given a folky treatment, and it is a lot of fun:

Angels From The Realms Of Glory was listed in a survey a couple of years ago as one of the top ten Christmas carols not known by 18-29 year olds here in the UK. Such a sad loss of tradition! I love this version, though. Maddy Prior has been a part of the English folk music scene since the late Sixties, and was a founder member of Steeleye Span, one of the two bands (with Fairport Convention) at the forefront of the development of our folk-rock tradition. She is still in the band but each Christmas she has also been with the Carnival Band, who do a series of gigs putting their own slant on traditional carols. This is a typical example: they have a lot of fun doing these shows, and from the roar at the end it seems our typically stuffy British audiences enjoy them too! As a side note, the fiddle player is Giles Lewin, who was a founder member of Bellowhead, my favourite live band, who you saw in Part One of this year’s Countdown.

I first began playing a version of my Advent Countdown back in 2015. In those days it was just one song a day, which I played on what was then known as Twitter before it fell foul of the Musk effect. It has since morphed into the version you now see on my blog, but there is one song – and only one – which I have played every year whatever format my selections were taking. This one:

Brynn Andre’s version of Let It Snow is my absolute favourite version of this Christmas standard, as I told her when I first heard it. I’ve just checked and the comment I left – and Brynn’s reply – are still there. Rather shockingly to me is the fact that this video has only received just shy of 1,200 views in the twelve years since it was posted, and I probably account for quite a few of those! That fits with what I have said before about Brynn going under the radar: she released two albums, in 2009 and 2011, and a couple of EPs in 2011 and 2012, but then went rather silent. This was the title track on the second of those EPs, neither of which is available any longer, as far as I can find. She got married, started a family, and developed freelance careers as a copywriter and a life coach, which you can find under her married name of Brynn Johnson or the company name – Swandive –  if you are in need of either service. She made a small return in 2018 and 2019 and then fulfilled my wish to hear new music from her with a full album, Honeymoon, last year. Like this song and video that album is ‘delightful’ and I recommend it to you.

My history with this next song has a bit of a story to it. It is the first of today’s two seasonal songs, and it is still as beautiful to my ears as ever:

Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Every December Sky is very much a song about the feelings and emotions this time of year can bring as we move into winter. It is a wonderful song, so it is very much a part of my own playlist: it is just about as close to musical perfection as you can probably get, with the combination of a beautiful tune and lovely words. For those who might be puzzling as to where they have heard the male harmony voice before, it is John Prine, who sadly passed away in April 2020 and who I have played in a couple of Tuesday Tunes posts. If it’s of interest, I have written about this song before, about how I first heard it and a connection I feel to it, in #SaturdaySongs No.7 which I updated and reposted a couple of years ago, here. Beth Nielsen Chapman hasn’t enjoyed the chart success I think she deserves – she has never reached the US Top 100 Albums chart, though she has appeared five times in the Billboard Heatseekers listings. Take a listen to this and tell me you don’t agree that is criminal! This song was on Beth’s 2002 album Deeper Still which, of course, got nowhere near the charts: I rest my case.

Next up is the first of the debut songs, which is the other seasonal one. It goes back a long way and it was a surprise to me that I had never played it before. About time I did, then:

Gordon Lightfoot first released Song For A Winter’s Night on his second album, The Way I Feel, in April 1967. As far as I can tell the album didn’t chart anywhere and this track wasn’t released as a single, but I think it stands the test of time well. According to a biography of Gordon, it was written on a hot summer night in Cleveland while he was performing there. He was missing his wife of the time, Brita Ingegerd Olaisson, and his thoughts turned to winter. Don’t ask me why – Wikipedia doesn’t say and their link to the biography is broken! There have been a number of cover versions, including by Harry Belafonte, Nana Mouskouri (who is Greek, so naturally she sang this in French), but most notably by Sarah McLachlan, who recorded her version for the soundtrack of the 1994 remake of the movie Miracle on 34th Street. It’s a typical Gordon Lightfoot song, with a nice tune and intelligent lyrics. Sadly, he passed away last year but has left us a legacy of great music. This video is a good performance of the song, though the cameraman does seem to have been distracted by seeking out some favourites of his in the audience.

Today’s closing tune is one that I have played several times before, in different versions. I played you a beautiful version of Simple Gifts by The Hound + The Fox a couple of episodes ago, and then on Friday they released a new video showing their fun side, so I’m giving them a second outing. This is brilliant:

Mackenzie is gorgeous in that, but I think the show was stolen by Rowan, their older boy, doing a superb take on Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The lovely fiddle playing of Luisa Marion also merits a mention. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was written by Johnny Marks, the man who gave us Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer amongst several other Christmas songs, and was first recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958: it has since been covered many times. By the song’s 50th anniversary in 2008, Brenda Lee’s original version had sold over 15 million copies around the world with the 4th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single, though I suspect those stats may since have been surpassed given the sheer volumes of downloads since then. In 2019, her recording of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It is very much a standard for this time of year, and this version is charming.

So, that’s my five for today, which only leaves me to find you an ad or a short film to play you. As I have mentioned a couple of times this year’s crop of ads here has been pretty dire, so I’m sharing a favourite of mine from several years ago. I’ve played this several times before, but it’s still great:

Hafod Hardware is a shop in the mid-Wales town of Rhayader, who made a set of four Christmas videos from 2017 to 2020. This is the third of them, from 2019, which was the one that made a star of little Arthur Lewis Jones, who was just 2 at the time. He’ll be 7 now, and I’m really hoping that he wants to make another of these and persuades his Dad to do it – we need their brilliance back again, after four blank Christmases! I still can’t watch that without a tear forming. Everything about it is perfection: the story that revolves around Arthur helping his grandparents in their shop, the clever way he morphs into his dad, Tom, at the end, and how Tom imitates Arthur’s 👍 greeting, all topped off by Andrea Von Kampen’s beautiful version of the Alphaville song, Forever Young, which underpins the whole message. Trying, and failing, to copy a good idea the song was also used the following year by McDonalds in their Christmas advert: proving yet again that there is no justice, the incredibly inferior version they used, by Becky Hill – a ‘reality’ tv show winner – made it to #35 in the UK singles chart. I defy anyone to listen to both versions and not prefer Andrea’s! What they couldn’t even come close to was matching the viral success of this video, which garnered national press and tv coverage, and resulted in a visit by the then Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, who could be seen buying a copy of Andrea’s latest album. The video has over 2.8m views on YouTube, and I think that is richly deserved.

That is definitely it for today, and I hope you enjoyed these. Only eight days to go now, so you’d better get the sprouts on soon. Enjoy your week, and I’ll be back in a couple of days with another episode of seasonal fun 🎄