ChristMixTape 2020

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

This year's mix and all other mixes are now also listenable on Spotify (some tracks may not be available)

TRACK LISTING:

01 - Teddy's Bleaken Story

02 - Bob's Burgers - Twinkly Lights

03 - They Might Be Giants - The Bells Are Ringing

04 - Anberlin - Christmas, Baby Please Come Home

05 - In Her Own Words - Yule Shoot Your Eye Out (Fall Out Boy Cover)

06 - jimmy2296 - Bring Me To Crawl In The Snow

07 - Reel Big Fish - Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

08 - Ivoryline - O Holy Night

09 - The Beach Boys - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

10 - Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - Winter Wonderland

11 - Muppet Christmas Carol - It Feels Like Christmas

12 - Nat King Cole - Buon Natale (Means Merry Christmas To You)

13 - Brenda Kutz White - Christmas In The Northwest

14 - Vanessa Williams - Do You Hear What I Hear

15 - Mae - Carol Of The Bells

16 - Relient K - In Like A Lion (Always Winter)

17 - Switchfoot - Evergreen (Backstage EP version)

18 - Sufjan Stevens - Lonely Man Of Winter

19 - Patty Loveless - O Come All Ye Faithful

20 - Emmylou Harris - Light Of The Stable

21 - Mark Knopfler - Matchstick Man

22 - Jackson Browne - The Rebel Jesus

23 - Jacob Collier - In The Bleak Midwinter

What can possibly be said about this unexpectedly eventful introduction into the new decade that hasn't already been said?

Every year in this space I write some meaningful platitudes about how I've grown or what I've learned, or changes in my life or what I think it means to be alive and human in our world. I just looked back on my little blerb for 2016 and I thought that was a crappy year. Why? Because we lost Bowie AND Prince like 4 months apart??

2020 has wrecked us all.

Sickness, unemployment, death, recession, upheval and uncertainty. Police brutality, righteous protesting, understandable rioting. Political turmoil, polarising tribalism, fake news, doomscrolling. Social distancing, sheltering-in-place, lockdowns and hand sanitiser. If you're doing fine right now you're probably not paying close enough attention. So how do we celebrate right now? Why do we?

For me, it's been important to acknowledge the difficulties, but not be ruled by them. This year will pass on into history, as do they all; everything in transit. I will continue to be thankful for good things. You sometimes have to look a little harder to find them but they are there. After a forest fire (we've had some of those, too...) regrowth is aggressive and transformative, and that's my hope for us all. We will go on. Life will return to better than normal.

TL;DR - this has been a really hard year. Here's some music.

Happy Christmas xxoo