Once Upon a Bookshelf

Every year I buy myself a new album of Christmas music. I’m rather obsessed with Christmas music, and may very well listen to certain songs all year round (but shh, don’t tell anyone). Last night I loaded all of my Christmas music onto my iPod, and it has made a very has made my iPod very happy. However, I’m starting to think that my iPod is like Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, only instead of crying out for human blood, it’s crying out for more Christmas music.

So, now I need to decide which one new Christmas album I’m going to get this year.

I’ve already got John Denver & The Muppets, City on a Hill, the Happy Christmas CDs, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Michael Buble’s Christmas album, plus many others. I feel like I have all the ones worth getting; the past few years have been really hard deciding what was worth getting. This year, however, there seem to be so many to choose from that I don’t know what I want most.

It could be ‘nsync’s Christmas album. I used to have it and then lost it, and it has the best version of O Holy Night on it. The best. I could get the Jingle Spells album - but will I really want to listen to Christmas songs about Harry Potter in another couple of years? Maybe I should get Relient K’s new Christmas album - but it’s basically a repackage of their older Christmas CD with a few new songs on it. Or, Jars of Clay has a new Christmas album - and the Drummer Boy album is awesome (even if it was only 4 songs) as are all their other Christmas songs that they have done.

I only wish there were more Maybe This Christmas CDs. They are my all-time favourite Christmas albums; how can you beat a series of albums that has one song sung by the singer of one’s favourite band? I mean, yes, Brett Detar (of The Juliana Theory fame) only sings one song on one of the albums, and there are three whole albums, but it’s gotta count for something eh? Plus, all proceeds go to Toys For Tots. I’d pick up another one of those CDs in a second, but there aren’t any more, alas.

Anyone else have their eyes on any specific Christmas albums this year?

Unlike most people my age, it seems, I still favour albums as opposed to just songs. I would rather get a whole album than just download one or two songs from it - listening to the album the whole way through is a journey, and you miss out on that if you don’t get the whole thing. Recently, I’ve been listening to a few new ones that seem to be noteworthy:

Michael Bublé’s Call Me Irresponsible. Like previous Bublé releases, it took me a while to fall in love with the album. I bought this months ago, but I’ve avoided mentioning it as I didn’t know exactly what I thought of it. Now, it’s one of the few things I’ve listened to this past month. In fact, I’ve just realized that I’ve been listening to the same song (I’m Your Man) on repeat for the past four hours. It’s a more mature album than his previous ones, and his versions of The Best is Yet to Come, I’ve Got the World on a String and That’s Life rival my favourite versions of the songs.

The History Boys OST. Finally got my hands on this one. I love movie soundtracks because they usually have such a variety of stuff I’ve never heard of before. This is no exception, and while the songs are all so different in genres (ie: Gracie Field’s Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye vs New Order’s Blue Monday) they all suit the movie so well.

Speaking of soundtracks…. Hairspray. I saw the movie this past weekend, and went out and got the soundtrack immediately. Shockingly, I’ve never seen the original, so I don’t know how the new one compares with the older one, but I enjoyed it. It’s got John Travolta and Queen Latifah in it - of course I enjoyed it. The soundtrack is just as fun as the film, imho.

I’m on the verge of going to pick up TMBG’s The Else as well. Some point soon, I hope. One of the main podcasts I listen to is the official TMBG podcast, and the past few episodes they have been playing live versions of the songs on The Else. From what I’ve heard thus far, it sounds like this album might be almost as good as Flood, which is saying something considering Flood is one of my all-time favourite albums.

Other podcasts I’ve been listening to recently are PotterCast, Firefly Talk, Escape Adulthood, and the GBS podcast (even though it’s updated rather infrequently). But I’m looking for new ones to listen to - some of the ones I used to are either no longer updated or there are big huge spaces in between updates that I kind of forget what was discussed on the previous ones. Anyone have any suggestions?