Category Archives: Music Genres

Love Lights

Christmas is a time to shed some light on the meaning of life. So let’s up the wattage on love, shall we? I knew you’d want to.

Gwen Stefani is looking for love “Under the Christmas Lights.” Shoo bop.

Sia is looking for love “Under the Christmas Lights.” Oo-we-oo.

Cimorelli is falling like the snow (for you). “Christmas Lights” is so girly in love, i’m matching periods with it. Show pop.

Natalie Brown sounds a bit more grounded with her love letter “Christmas Lights.” She doesn’t need mistletoe with her jazzy slow pop, just some of the periphery –and you.

Switching to the male point of view (sorta), The Crystalairs doo wop the zoom to heaven with that Wintery “Light of Love.” Cooler than the girls?

Slidawg & The Redneck Ramblers get gooey romantic with the squeezebox serenade “The Lights on the Trailer.” Guys!

Well then, let the man do it. JD McPherson’s jazzabilly swings “Twinkle (Little Christmas Lights)” for the cool cats and kittens. Like butter.

WTF Lights

Sometimes the lights are in your face, all over the place, too fast to chase… and you can’t draw a bead on their meaning. It means that your meds aren’t working, or that lights have outgrown their symbolic roots and have become the new reality. Cope!

Monica hypnotically chants about Christmas night and how “I Saw Light.” I’d give it a BLUE ALERT if i could understand it.

Darlene Como similarly warbles and creates, now with fewer actual words, a strange world for the holidays with “Twisted Christmas Lights in Romantic India.” May i presume so much that all is not well here?

FoloSound colors outside the rap lines with a story of love(?) and heartbreak(?) (or just music) with “808s & Christmas Lights.” The 808s from aught i can gather is the electronic beat machine setting the rhythm here.

Eric Lichter gets coffeehouse beat poet in “Christmas Lights for Matadors.” This balletic word salad may yield to explication, but i’ll swim and sway happily regardless (mostly to the banjo parts). Fine alt-folk.

Repeating Lights

I swear i’ll find the time someday to feature songs that just repeat one line over and over, like some brain-damaged mantra that means everything but sounds foreign eight reps in.

Tyrone & Lesley strum that uke and strut their stuff with the phrase “Like a Light Bulb.” Does it mean Christmas?! Man, it means whatever you’d like it to mean. Listen to it again.

Kingdom 2 follows up with the stomping, orchestrated alt “Big Red Light.” (Some ah ah ahs here, but they just emphasize the main theme.) Party time!

Gift Lights

What better way to celebrate lights at Yuletide than to make a present out of them? Symbolism capitalism synergy.

Most hilariously, The Saturday Night Live cast (feat. Emma Stone) poke at that sore tooth of “The Christmas Candle” as a trash gift that gets you off the hook of the thought that counts. (Pay attention to the lotion-pairing advice, though.) Smarmy gospel girl-pop.

Most oddly, The Mystic Cowboys wonder if you’d like a “Stoplight for Christmas.” Literally. (Except, they’re cowboys, so… layers.) Fun alt-western.

Santa Lights

Lights for Jesus, check. Lights for family, check. Anyone else need to see these around Christmas?

Antony Field kidsongs “Puttin’ Up the Christmas Lights” in order for Santa Claus to find the house. They’re good for that!

The Ohio City Singers swings the blues with “Waiting on a Red Light.” This story warns of who is coming Christmas Eve. So… i’m not sure if there are traffic signals involved, or the prostitute’s neighborhood, or it’s just a good time to go monochrome for the big guy.

The light Santa needs is generally the freak-nose-show from the head of his herd. But Kitty Wells attempted to outsing that Rudolphjuggernaut in “Dasher with the Light Upon His Tail.” This country swanger beleaguers imagery–don’t imagine this one at home, kids!

Tree Lights

Blog here has covered trees and their decorations extensively, but let’s see what we still like while plugging away at Xmas lights songs.

Elevation Music pits Jesus-loving falsetto with kids’ music sentimentality in “I Love the Lights on the Christmas Tree.” Hate to tell ya, but i’m getting a synesthesia-headache…. (Even when Alan Price solos it.)

Continuing with our spiritual tree decorating, Jane Sieberry runs a chorale fantasy around and around with “Are You Burning, Little Candle?” It’s a hymn for her.

Beleaf (feat. Frank Puppet) raps the joy into the reveal with “Light It Up (Christmas).” Quite a house warmer.

Several oldsters make solemn with “Let’s Light the Christmas Tree.” Let’s keep it to a barely resurrected 1948 crooner from Jack Brown & The Three Jills. It’s about missing those far away (serving in WWII).

Bearkat takes a lively big band sound and amps it up with millennial pop in “Hang the Lights on the Tree.” I’m dancing now.

Blinded marches out their industrial punk march “Candycanes and Christmas Lights” to catch your joy off off guard. Yet this DIY decoration course may add a new touch to your annual routine.

Trouble with Lights

Because we all love the Bob River’s song about one of the pains of Christmas being those gee-dee lights, we’ll pass on that one. Who else hates the snarling, tangled, uncooperative beasties?

We’ve heard some of these before. Oh well.

Getting them out was the problem for Watkins & The Rapiers with their Argentinely syncopated “Christmas Lights Untango.” Tee hee.

Checking them was the problem for Brian Kinder with his oompah kidsong “Blinking Lights.” See, for a Midwesterner, the term blinking is like swearing. Har de ha.

For a neighborly commentary, Z100 concocted that wacky rude pop blues number “Your Christmas Lights Look Like Crap.” This is olden comedy, so offensive was the new black.

Ian Sands has something I recently discovered (beware: talented amateur). “I Hate Christmas Lights” is a punk metal dad band pop number that ranges over random cultural references to make its (with hard to understand vocals). Still, tip of the hat to South Brunswick High School art teacher Ian Sands.

Also, Lights

Christmas lights can be just one more thing on the to-do list for holiday atmosphere. No biggie.

The “Lights so Bright” in Paul Cartledge, Philip Jewson’s kidstune merely pave the way for Santa, angels, and presents. It’s a warning sign, not a symptom.

Marcy Tigner’s aw shucks Shirley Temple approach to “Colored Christmas Lights” makes me worried she’s singing about a segregated neighborhood. But her eyes are full of all these things, including holiday sparklies. Kidsong of bygone days.

Cod Sent Flute sums up the randomness of the season with the quiet garage poem “Christmas Lights.” Those lights are there, perhaps, to show us Jesus.

The usual complaint about sunny California Christmas puts “The Lights and Buzz” into their proper pigeonholes by Jack’s Mannequin. Incidental alt, with a message.

Showtime Lights

For some, Christmas lights is the Big Show, wait we’ve been waiting for all year, the true meaning of peace on Earth….

The cast from Bob’s Burgers bring the tolerance with a metaphor of enjoying lights of all colors diva-channeling “Twinkly Lights.” Here, enjoy a minute & a half of context before the Todrick Hall showtune.

Also making a big production out of bulbs, Jennifer Paige jazz rocks the showtime “Lights, Camera, Christmas.” Get ready….

For others, the lights are all we got. “Camouflage and Christmas Lights” returns to the blog, because Rodney Carrington’s song is good enough. And because Duck Dynasty‘s The Robertsons covered this country treacle.

Look at Lights

Decorating with lights can be as much fun as cleaning the house, but when it’s time to bask in Christmas wonderment near the top of the list of fun is wandering about to look at all the pretty twinklies. Even not on drugs.

(However, if you are so bent, perhaps The Smoking Trees’ “The Psychedelic Lights of Christmas” might be up your mainline. Whoa.)

The Symmetrics punch the pop (seriously, the plosives are seismic) with “Light It Up.” It’s that moment when the whole thing is turned on. (Mistletoe included, wink.)

Kidsongs ruin the imagination when they rely on familiar tunes (is it a parody? are there so few melodies? built-in sway-alongs?), but “Little Light” by Bobs & Lolo might reach above that low bar using ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ as a stepping stone. ‘Sup to you.

K C Kookaburra (The Swinging Kookaburra) admits that driving around or walking around “Look at Christmas Lights” is a happy time. Australian pop.

Brad Dison is just driving around looking at “Christmas Lights.” This dad band rockabilly nails our sentiment, coolly joyful.