"The Twelve Songs of Christmas" So Far This Year

As Christmas approaches, here are this season’s episodes of our Christmas music podcast.

”The Twelve Songs of Christmas,” our Christmas music podcast, is finishing its eighth season. It started with Christmas in July and will air its last episode of the year on Christmas Eve. It’s on all the major podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music as well TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com. We drop episodes on Thursday with the last one up on Monday, December 22 since Christmas will fall on a Thursday this year.

This season’s episodes (so far) have also been pulled together here for your listening ease.

Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson talks about at length about Artificial Intelligence (AI), and his experiences with it. He used it when challenged to write a Christmas song and talks about that, as well as the odd feeling of hearing AI-generated tracks that imitated Porcupine Tree were eerily accurate.

Songwriter Bruce Sudano entered the public eye as a member of Alive n Kicking, best known for the 1970 hit “Tighter, Tighter.” He remembers those days, learning from Tommy James, and meeting Donna Summer, who he married and managed. He remembers her career and producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and talks about her Christmas album, The Christmas Spirit, a faith-based album produced by Michael Omartian.

Eduardo Arenas records as É Arenas, and when this interview was conducted, he was in the process of leaving the band Chicano Batman. We talked about the “Cumbia Navideñas” he has been working on as a solo act, and that conversation really became one about how his life and art intersect. And, he introduces us to Rigo Tovar.

Arenas has just pulled together all of his holiday music on a new vinyl album, Yo Soy tu Santa.

Last year, we ran part of our interview with Joey Williams, musical director for The Blind Boys of Alabama about their 2003 Christmas album Go Tell it on the Mountain. Earlier this year, I found an interview I conducted with the album’s producer, John Chelew, in 2016 when the album was reissued. Chelew died later that year, but we included his memories of recording with guests George Clinton, Tom Waits, and Chrissie Hynde. This time, we added Williams’ memories of recording Talkin’ Christmas in 2014 with the Blind Boys of Alabama and Taj Mahal.

The all-Christmas radio switch has become such a common part of the Christmas season that it’s easy to think that adult contemporary stations have always temporarily changed format some time around Black Friday. That wasn’t always the case, and Jerry Ryan is generally credited as the guy who instituted that change. In this special episode, Alex talks to Ryan about his start in radio and the years that led to that innovation.

Black Market Dub is a Los Angeles-based production duo that made their name by stripping the vocals from favorites by The Clash, David Bowie, Hall & Oates and more, then replacing the band tracks with reggae-tied versions to reimagine the hits.

They’re at their best on their true dub releases including A Black Market Christmas. Alex talks to Black Market and Wise Owl about their trip to dub including the role Grand Theft Auto played in introducing them to Scientist, one of the dub greats.

Before Mariah Carey recorded “All I Want for Christmas is You,” New Orleans’ Vince Vance and the Valiants recorded a country pop song by the same name. Vance’s song, like most Christmas songs, has lived in the shadow of Carey’s song, and in 2022 he sued her for copyright infringement. The suit was dismissed earlier this year, so we went through what we know at this point about the suit.

Last year, Minneapolis-based jazz pianist Nick Bhalla recorded Saint Nick, an album of solo piano versions of Christmas favorites. This year, he appeared on 12 Songs to talk about the life of the gigging musician, and the thought process behind his lovely, user-friendly takes on Christmas classics.

The “Attention K-Mart Shoppers” collection at Archive.org collects digitized versions of the music played in K-Mart and Kresges’ stores on cassette and vinyl in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Mark Davis started the collection with the tapes he took while working at a K-Mart in the early 1980s, and he talks about the archive, in-store music, and what it said about the way people thought about popular music. And of course, he talks about Christmas music. The episode introduced us to the Glad Singers, and we’re glad it did.

Chris Murphy of Sloan talks about life in what he calls a cult band. The band started in Halifax in the early ‘90s and their debut, Smeared, bore enough resemblance to shoegaze to get signed in the post-Nirvana frenzy. With each passing year, the band’s pop and rock classicism became clearer and their distance from the world of alternative rock grew. Now they make music they’re proud of like this year’s Based on the Best Seller, play good shows and are beloved (as they should be!) by the people who have stayed for the journey.

This episode is a frank conversation about that musical life, the new album, and their Christmas music, including a cover of Slade’s classic “Merry Christmas Everybody.”

A second kick at the all-Christmas radio can, this time with radio consultant Kevin Robinson, who adds his perspective on how and when stations change for the season, and what songs people want to hear.

This episode is an encore presentation from 2021, when a COVID-lonely Steve Lukather took the time to talk about Ringo Starr, Sammy Davis Jr., and Eddie Van Halen as the studio guitar hero remembers recording his Christmas album, Santamental.

Kristian Noel Pedersen is a Toronto-based musician who has a full career as a Christmas music artist in addition to the music he makes the rest of the year. On December 5, he’ll release his 16th Christmas album, Bullshit & Gift Wrapping. He talked to 12 Songs about his journey and the Christmas music he loves, including albums by Hanson and Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton that he covered in their entirety.

Hip-hop and library music were big influences on multi-instrumentalist and producer Shawn Lee, whose music pulls together sounds and styles from different eras to create funky tracks that sound like cratediggers’ prizes from a year and city that you can’t put your finger on.

It seems natural that Lee would have recorded not one but two Christmas albums: 2007’s A Very Ping Pong Christmas: Funky Treats from Santa’s Bag (under the name Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra), and 2021’s Kung Fu Christmas.

Brian Wilson died a month before this season of the podcast started, and the question for the first few months was how to properly react on the show to his passing. That question was answered in spades when 2000’s Brian Wilson: Live at the Roxy Theatre was reissued. I talked to Wilson’s biographer David Leaf about the 2000 show and The Beach Boys’ 1964 album, The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album.

The second part of 12 Songs’ tribute to Brian Wilson continues with an interview with Probyn Gregory, who played with Wilson onstage and in the studio from 2000 and the Roxy show until he retired from live performances in 2022. Gregory remembers playing and recording with Wilson in good and hard times. He talks about Wilson’s relationship with SMiLE and recording his 2005 Christmas album, What I Really Want for Christmas.

Ken Kessler from “The Sounds of Christmas” podcast and Gerry D from the “Totally Rad Christmas” podcast join 12 Songs for an incomplete look at developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Christmas music. They talk about some of the quaint, older AI Christmas songs to insidious creations designed to fit into Spotify playlists.