Christmas Time Rhyme

Ben Folds does Christmas

Here’s something I discovered because I love late night TV. At Christmastime, I’m constantly looking for new Christmas songs because I’ve really gotten tired of the classics. this one struck me because the lyrics are so Ben Folds:

One drives his mid-life crisis Trans Am

Listen, you're all fuckin' freaks, but we're family

It’s about the hustle and bustle of getting together at Christmas, of memories of Christmases past and creating new ones. It reminded me of the chaos of driving to my grandmother’s on Christms Eve, with me and all my siblings in the back.

Folds started off doing a Christmas album because he wanted to be lazier, so he figured he’d do covers and call it a day. But he found very few songs he wanted to do. This ignited his songwriting muscles and created his new album Sleigher. As he describes the process to Variety:

As I began to write, I realized how Christmas just frames everyone’s year. It doesn’t matter if you are into Christmas or not. It definitely comes down to: Where am I? Christmas really frames the year, so that you’re back in it and you can really know where you are, because all the other variables have been eliminated. It’s the same songs on the radio, the same ads on TV, familiar weather, colors — but it’s also like, ‘Oh, so-and-so’s not here anymore. So-and-so is divorced. My nephew, he was just riding his bicycle around; now he’s got a job and he’s lost his hair.’ You really frame life that way. So I found it actually suddenly super easy for me to start writing songs for it. I would write one, and then another and another, as I was unable to find covers that I liked.

So how did I discover it? Here’s Folds sitting in with the Late Night band. It wasn’t part of the day’s broadcast but played in the studio during a commercial break, which the show released on YouTube.

Enjoy your song of the day!