Lots of people put holiday playlists together, and one of them is David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame (and David Byrne fame too). His list is called “Christmas Music for People Who Hate Christmas Music,” and it’s got some great choices, including at least one that’s been on my list before and several that I’ve had in the “futures” file for a couple years.
One of those in the latter category is by Julia Jacklin, an indie-ish singer/songwriter from Australia who has been getting more and more attention since putting herself on the map with her 2016 debut album “Don’t Let The Kids Win.” Her 2020 single “baby jesus is nobody’s baby now” is perfect for someone who isn’t feeling the holidays, though Jacklin says she wrote the song at a time in 2019, when a natural disaster in her home country left her missing Christmas:
“I was imagining Christmas as being this time where we all came together again and took a collective breath but then the bushfires hit and my family live in the country so it was a direct threat. I was living in Melbourne, still pretty new to it, and wasn’t able to go home, the roads were blocked and my family were being evacuated periodically for a month. At one point Melbourne was blanketed in smoke from the fires, the sun was this menacing red, it felt apocalyptic and pretty hopeless.”
And “pretty hopeless” is how the lyrics read; compared to the people in this song, the ones in the fairly messed up “Merry Christmas From The Family” are doing ok. The exception is in the last verse, where Jacklin sings “Say it loud, and hope it’s true/Next year will be much easier on you.” She said of the song, “I wrote this in my room looking forward to 2020, hoping it would be a reset of some kind lol.”
If this holiday season is making you feel the way the people in this song feel, there’s still time to shape it more to your liking. Or to at least enjoy some great music while you slog through. Hang in there!
