Category: country sort of

If it’s a card at Christmas, but it’s not a Christmas card… what is it?

The Effengee’s (by way of a fine John Prine sound) folk their Dylanesque “Card with No Name.” But it’s about (among other things) a gift with a blank tag. Enigmatically emblematic.

Jethro Tull’s “Birthday Card at Christmas” also dodges the traditional posting. This is the mad symphonic rock of Ian Anderson, expect multiple meanings.

John Vosel & The Partycrashers have a country swing-pop rock chimney warning for you: don’t send a “Belated Christmas Card.” This guy hates waiting by the mail box.

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

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

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.

‘They’ll be singing… Gonna be singing…” begins the song. We feel like we’re IN THE MUSIC. Whoa, Nelly.

“Christmas Carols by the Old Corral” was minor hit for Tex Ritter in 1945. Former Ritter back up Wesley Tuttle adds some aw-shucks yodeling to his concurrent version. Gene Autry flattened it for his Melodie Ranch broadcast of the same year. Nine years later Luke Simmons and His Blue Mountain Boys add some rock guitar but subtract with gramma’s electric organ.

What do you do when the deserving go cold, the lambs are lost, the Christmas spirit doesn’t perform miracles? Well, you could sing. It might make you feel better.

The Dean Martin Show’s Las Vegas showgirls back-up formed a group called The Goldiggers (it was a sad time) and hit the racks with a ’69 Xmas album offering a version of giving: “I Sing Noel.” Man, those high notes.

Sandler and Young combine for their “I Sing Noel.” Hokey country gospel that invites you to come in out of the cold.

Belgian freedom fighters in 1950s comic book form are just as good of inspiration as any old Grimm’s tale. The Smurfs as a Saturday morning cartoon, however, are johnny-come-latelies to the smurf-capades.

Their execrable 1983 album Merry Christmas with the Smurfs offends with such morsels as the alphabet song inspired “Santa Claus is Coming Tonight,” the oddly downbeat “Smurfing Bells,” and the aptly old world oompah of “Christmas Presents.” But later (1996’s Christmas with the Smurfs) the dance party “Christmas Party” opens their isolationist utopia to more friendly possibilities.

Time Machine alert! If we were to go back to a time before the TV series, we might find the suddenly more valuable Father Abraham ’78 single featuring “Christmas in Smurfland.” Country twaddle with some Continental panache.

Love songs for millennials might be lazy, but they set their own standards. Netflix and chilly weather, anyone?

Kieron Liley realizes family fulfillment when they’re all gathered around the “Christmas TV.” Unplugged low-key alt-folk with an attitude.

Prettier pop strumming accompanies the fun flowers of “Xmas TV with You.” It’s a place and a time, but mostly, girl, it’s you.

Hot UK duo Slow Club seem to hope “Christmas TV” will bring them together. The many wistful ways of pop folk love slightly include the holidays and the boob tube.

Chris Isaak nails the loneliness and hopelessness of TV Christmas specials broadcasting in the background of that empty home. “Christmas on TV” is a country weeper with just the right twang.

Writing a song about a Christmas gift and stuck for a concept…? How about the song as the gift, you tautologist!

Bill Craft admits ‘this gift has no value’ in “A Gift of Song.” But it’s passable bluegrass.

Nugu Buyeng screwed up and got her “No Christmas Present.” Gets BLUE, backpedals, then tries to cover his ass claiming this song is the present. Lame-o. But fair folk rock rap.

Tommy Wiseau (awful movie “The Room”) has the gift of a “Christmas Song for You.” It’s almost worse than you suspect.

Kem has a ‘hey girl’ “Christmas Song for You.” I bet he got you something else, he’s that good. Slow soul.

Howard Livingston & Mile Marker 24 didn’t know what to get you. He went with his strengths. So “A Christmas Present” here is his mellow country. It’s for his mom and dad. Sentimental, and a spelling lesson.

Just say it. “This Song is Your Christmas Gift.” I hope you like it. It’s better than nothing. Pop from Fairmont. (Perhaps a veiled threat in there.)