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There are only so many well-known Christmas songs. There are the traditional carols and then the pop songs that are mostly from the 40′s and 50′s (see xkcd.com for details). As a result when a band puts out a collection of songs that are 75% covers, they only have so many songs to choose from. This wasn’t such a big deal five years ago because there were only a handful of new Christmas albums being released but now that so many more artists are doing it, you start to hear the same songs over and over. To combat this, artists start digging a little deeper to find songs to cover (see No Doubt’s version of Oi To The World or Stavesacre’s rendition of Saviour Of The Fools). Inevitably, there’s going to be some cross-over, there just so much Christmas music being released now. For whatever reason, there tends to be one of these songs that a lot of people seem to choose one year. A couple years ago, it was The Pogues Fairytale of New York (although I haven’t come across a version of that this year). This year, it seems to be In The Bleak Midwinter. Ok, so that song might not be that rare, but of the traditional carols, it’s usually up there with the French classic Il est né le divin enfant in terms of rarity. However, this year I’ve heard it fairly frequently. All this preamble might lead you to believe that I’m featuring one of these versions in the episode this week. That assumption would be wrong. Paper Route recorded a really good version a couple years ago, so I’m going to use that one instead. Here’s the playlist:

Tumbledown – Run Rudolph Run from “No Sleep ’til Christmas 3″

Seryn – Star of Wonder featuring Chase Johnson & Judson Valdez from “Seryn & Friends Christmas”
Folk Angel – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
The Wilderness of Manitoba – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing from “Ho Ho Ho Canada III” (Download it here.)
Paper Route – In The Bleak Midwinter from “Thank God The Year Is Finally Over”

Sloan – 12 Days of Christmas (Download it here.)
The Polyphonic Spree – It’s Christmas
Sufjan Stevens – The Midnight Clear from “Songs For Christmas VI: Gloria”

Stavesacre – Saviour Of The Fools from “Zambooie.com Holiday Download Sampler”

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next week.

Jared (@mtroads1)