Take a Card: world music

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Music from other countries have specific subgenre labels (and styles and significances), but i’m gonna lump ’em up here because i only got a couple and it’s acceptable as an American to do so.

Just across the pond is hardly far (or foreign), but “Our Irish Christmas Card” is so ethnocentric, you might need subtitles. Joe and Tammy Burns get into the Christmas card list, so the joke is how big those Catholic families are–hah hah, no contraception.

Filipino Christmas music is a big honking deal, so believe me when i say “Christmas Cards” by The Bukros Singers (in their own language) is honest, reverent, and celebratory.

Big fan of the frantic parang, although Malvern V, Gumbs’s “A Christmas Card” is a bit overdone with peppy brass backups. Comes off a bit disco.

Take a Card: jazz

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The revolution against tonality takes many forms. The genre jazz is as widespread as is category music. All it needs is a little unpredictability, though enormous range doesn’t hurt.

Starting country, wandering through girlband, Brooke White edges into jazz with “Christmas Card,” a pro-con list of some considerable melody.

Crazy piano meanders through Anine Stang’s “Christmas Card.” More girl power balladeering, but this is a horror movie of a song.

Boy jazz vocals can be a stretch (to cracking), but Kirk Talley gives it the ol’ falsetto try with his “Christmas Card.” Get the dogs out of the room.

The pretty but crazy stuff sounds like Teresa James excruciatingly scrutinizing “The Christmas Card” she may or may not send to you. Wild clarinet improv while she considers.

Take a Card: soft gospel

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Kumbaya, it’s not far from folk song to small circle church music. Actual gospel should raise the roof and shake the foundations of your assumptions.

Some lite-country music is so singsongy and single-minded that it should only be played for small gatherings–Amen! Paul Walden’s “A Penny Christmas Card” drawls a direct line from the card to you and God. Yahweh-Haw.

But Blaise Manino gives us a sweet often on-key flip through some “Christmas Cards” focusing on the message ‘Be Good,’ which i guess beats out ‘be a good song.’

Take a Card: country rock

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Country and rock’n’roll have the same progenitor (i guess most popular music does). Suffice to say, if you hear guitar tinkling, but the beat is up–you got us a hybrid.

Luke Pilgrim gets ‘Murrikan with “A Christmas Card” for someone he cares deply about, but can’t open up to. So he ratchet up the backbeat.

Swinging electric for the “Cowboy Country Christmas Card” mashes up the old and new for Stephen Amos. Some fine licks, but the song’s all about selling it.

Jingle bells, fuzzy filters, raspy vocals should add to the country of Mitchell Stone’s “My Christmas Card to You.” But it’s awful. He wishes you joy, happiness, and Mitchell Stone.

Pretty as peaches, but weary as worn shoes Jim Starks troubs “A Christmas Card” about a lonely man reading more into that piece of mail than you prolly intended. Yeah it’s only a soft rock connexion.

Take a Card: country sort of

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Something as primal as ancestral (European) music evolves with our changing needs to feel crappy. Cue the steel guitar!

Someone decided that the scratchy screechy vocalists of yore could be replaced with boys with the pipes of angels. Doug Stone tenors tenderly into the sad regret of “A Christmas Card.” He wishes you well, wherever you are.

Steven Curtis Chapman might be country but his reassuring “Christmas Card” is soapy boy band pop. Cool song, irritating delivery.

Taking the John Denver approach, Brad Parker plays up our hopes (not a country trope) with a “Christmas Card.” But, i think he’s sending it home from prison. So that’s better.

Frolicking fun from Phyllis Sinclair switching up to pop music time beating on her guitar with “Handwritten Christmas Card.” The pickin’ bridge is wonderful. I’m dancing.

Take a Card: bluegrass pop

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A pure form of country is down home bluegrass, which loves the pickin’ and strummin’ over the speed limit more than the surly sentiment. It’s hard to be sad with bluegrass!

Lugubrious gospel bluegrass from Kelly Nolf & Wyndi Harp harking back to the posing for the picture of “Our Family Christmas Card.” It’s not good news, but–hey–bluegrass.

Mark Best swings and sways with Sunday school rhythms for his blue grass special “The Christmas Card.” He wants you to know why he signed your card. It’s ‘cuz o’ God.

Take a Card: country

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Actual country music is much like folk music, hard living, hard loving, hard hardness. But more violins.

The Corn Fed Girls focus on that detail (those “Christmas Cards”) posted on your wall, which stands for something sad (and angry), so shove off. (But with a sweet mandolin sendoff.) And that’s country.

Take a Card: folk rock

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Mountain songs honoring the Old World (he means Europe, dude) of immigrants span centuries and inform our country, rock, and their offspring.

The message of good old folk music (poetic details of scratching meaning out of a lowly existence) leans nicely into protest rock. “Christmas Card” by Jon Latham is more modern than all that, but coulda been a contender around 1967.

Prison harmonica feists up Stephen L. Kelly’s “A Christmas Card.” This is a deadly serious love letter to the trappings of the holidays. He. Loves. It.

Nosie Katzmann pollutes his folk with flute and finger popping. But his “Christmas Cards” is alt folk, a modern emo unplugged whimsy about keeping in touch.

Scandinavians like our Wild West and cowboys and have contributed some interesting cowboy songs. The Ballroom Band plays sad moaning old timey folk like Dylan. “The Christmas Card” tells the story of loneliness and loss and that little ‘ol piece of paper.

Take a Card: mor

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Middle of the road music (for programming ‘beautiful music’ radio stations back in the ’70s) became a way to appeal to the corn belt without rocking the boat. This was less exciting than popular music, and less artistic than classical. It plain lacked talent so as to fill in the background and not arouse attention, and became known as ‘elevator music’ or the brand name Muzak.

Professional MOR-on Pat Boone (sadly past his prim prime here) embodies our message with “Christmas Cards.” Cliched, but mellow.

While not aged or old, Gregg Charmly resuscitates MOR with “My Christmas Card to You” song. It’s not about anything. Don’t listen except ironically.

Also beating the dead horse, Don Adams sends a melodramatic melancholic “Xmas Card form the Other Side.” It’s quavering blues, but without authenticity. Blahs-ville.

“My Christmas Card to You” from faded Broadway chanteuse Marni Nixon tests the definition of ‘song.’ Uncontrolled warbling about what she’d write on your card is what will be playing in the waiting room of my hell. [This version comes with voice over instructions for the elderly.]