Balarama Music

Carbon Leaf Countdown #38: Christmas Child

Jan 22

Doug2010s carbon leaf 1 Comment

Less than a month removed from Christmas, it’s time to revisit all those wonderful feelings again. At #38, it’s “Christmas Child!”

Christmas music like this just isn’t made anymore. Period. Sure, there’s Christmas albums released every year and someone big comes out with a Christmas single, but where’s the quality? She & Him’s effort last year left me very uneasy – not what I would expect from them. Coldplay’s “Christmas Lights” was just bad in my opinion and don’t get me started on Kanye West’s and Justin Bieber’s songs. They just don’t make Christmas music right anymore. No one wants a song you just recorded to make money (“Christmas Is All Around Us” anyone?) and no one wants to hear random bands cover The Beach Boys & Nat King Cole anymore. It’s just been done to death. Write some original material. I’m sure it’s challenging, but all good things should be, no? Leave it to Carbon Leaf to show what all the other artists really can’t do.

The Christmas Child album is fantastic and full of some great songs like “Red Punch Green Punch” and “Christmas At Sea.” “Christmas Child,” naturally, is the best of the best from the album though and is one of their most evocative songs ever written. The lyrics capture perfectly the feeling of waiting and waiting for Christmas to come when we were in our childhood. As the song counts down the weeks until Saint Nick comes, the chorus proudly proclaims: “And I will lie lie lie awake, I will lie awake and I will stay right here until I fade away. __ weeks til Christmas Day!” That could have been any of us at age 6 waiting and waiting and waiting for the most wonderful time of the year. Musically, the music here is so spot-on too. In fact, purchase the album and the last track is an instrumental version of the song that sounds just as Christmas-y without the lyrics as it does with them. The mandolin melody is extremely strong here and just really sticks in your head. It’s the perfect Christmas song and it’s the album you’re going to want to play as you decorate your Christmas tree. Who cares if Katy Perry releases a Christmas album next year with her covering all the songs that you can hear in a Target while shopping for gifts? Go for this instead.

Song: Christmas Child
Album: Christmas Child
Year: 2010