ChristMixTape 2016

Click the album cover to download the entire mix as a .zip archive or click here to listen to/download the individual tracks!

TRACK LISTING:

01 - Bill Murray - Christmas Blues

02 - Beavis & Butthead - Santa's Dumb Laugh

03 - Brian Setzer Orchestra - (Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man With the Bag

04 - Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - White Christmas

05 - Ella Fitzgerald - Sleigh Ride

06 - The Summer Set - This Christmas

07 - Bob's Burgers - Choose The Tree

08 - Train - Shake Up Christmas

09 - Green Day - Xmas Time Of The Year

10 - Phoenix feat. Bill Murray - Alone On Christmas Day

11 - The Polyphonic Spree - It's Christmas

12 - John McClane & Hans Gruber - Yippee Ki Yay

13 - Vaughn Monroe - Let It Snow

14 - Otis Redding - Merry Christmas Baby

15 - SHIELDS - Wonderful Christmastime (Live In Studio)

16 - Norah Jones - It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

17 - First Aid Kit - Blue Christmas

18 - Dawes - Christmas Time Is Here

19 - Fall Out Boy - Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

20 - Sting - Ghost Story (Live from 'A Winter's Night' at Durham Cathedral)

21 - Community - That's What Christmas Is For

22 - Miley Cyrus - Silent Night

23 - Prince - Another Lonely Christmas

This year’s mix, in both cover art and content, aims to reflect the current general feeling of the world; a kind of surprised exhaustion, a desire to just close your eyes and let the cold consume you, a feeling that, as the dumb kids say, “I just can’t even anymore”.

I think in war they call this ‘shell shock’.

Is to say 2016 has been a complete and utter butt-rag of a year also to give in to so much popular melodrama? Or is that in fact an apt and deserved descriptor?

So in the year that ‘fake news’ finally became a mainstream media talking point (so take this with a grain of salt), all I seem to see over social networks is how much we should all be happy to see the back of 2016, with its political upheaval, divided countries and numerous dead celebrities, almost enough to be suspicious…

We saw a game show host trick an entire nation into letting him become a world power leader, a misinformed country petulantly decide it didn’t want to live in its own continent anymore, and a gorilla shot in the face on live TV. Bombings, ebola, zika, hurricanes, wildfires, and even more mass shootings in the only country where it ever seems to happen.

Celebrities big enough to be recognised mononymously started dropping like flies;

Bowie&

Rickman&

Wogan&

Corbett&

Cohen&

Prince&

Wilder&

Yelchin&

Aherne&

Ali.

I don’t ever remember a more dangerous year to be an incredible creative.

And so when people say they’ll be glad to see the back of 2016, is that a fair assertion? Has this year really been as heinously terrible as everyone seems to suggest? Or have we just been incredibly unlucky to have had such a tight grouping of crap hitting our collective proverbial fans?

Personally, 2016 has been pretty good to me. I visited the USA twice for the first time ever, a trend which I’m hoping will continue. Freelance work is still a waking dream; it’s so nice not only to be able to do what I love for a living but also to be able to write my own ticket in when/where I work and keep a firm grasp of my freedom in doing so. I saw Relient K for the first time. I saw Switchfoot for the fifth time. I saw Coldplay for the sixth time, and have already booked my 7th in 2017. New Star Wars didn’t suck. My YouTube channel to which I upload videos as a hobby is seeing a brief spurt in popularity, so if you haven’t already subscribed be sure to get in there for the early follower bragging rights! I haven’t recorded any music in a looong time, but I feel like this creative (and personal/spiritual) slump may be coming to an end, so here’s praying big things in 2017.

I do however feel the collective weight of a slightly crummy year in the grand scheme of things; I’m actually slightly concerned at the thought of the CO2 levels which will appear in the air when at the stroke of midnight on January 1st 2017 we all breathe a sigh of relief at finally being rid of 2016 once and for all. But we’re a resilient bunch, us human beings, and I have no doubt that we’ll live to fight another day.

So, until the inevitable ChristMixTape 2017, God willing, I wish peace and good will to all of you.

P xo