Kenny Loggins "December" album was released in October 1998 on Sony Music. Kenny Loggins clearly has mixed feelings about Christmas. In his liner notes to this, his holiday album, Kenny Loggins twice refers to it as "bitter-sweet," and that sense is carried over into his song choices and arrangements.
Kenny Loggins picks only three real standards, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)," "White Christmas," and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," all ballads from the 1940s, adds a mixture of jazzy ("Christmastime Is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas) and traditional ("Coventry Carol," sung with David Crosby and Graham Nash) material and some obscurities, and writes four new songs of his own.
But in all cases, Kenny Loggins' approach is low-key and reflective, with slow tempos and restrained performances. While not specifically religious, he seems concerned with revealing "what Christmas really means," as he puts it in his own "The Bells Of Christmas." The result is an unusually somber seasonal collection, perhaps more suited for the dead of winter than the run-up to the year's biggest celebration.
Kenny Loggins "December" album tracklisting:
1. Walking in the Air
2. Christmas Song
3. Bells of Christmas
4. Coventry Carol
5. Christmas Time Is Here
6. Angels in the Snow
7. White Christmas
8. Some Children See Him
9. On Christmas Morning
10. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
11. December
Kenny Loggins "December" CD: ORDER IT NOW.
Dear Mr. Loggins,
My mom died a year ago today...19th of December 2004...
I was having a day of remembering...I'd written an email to my closest friends and relatives before the break of day...then to cheer me up, I opened a gift my brother had sent me (he sent twelve gifts to be opened the twelve days before Christmas) and in it was a candle in a cup and some coasters with angels on themwith a note to remind me of Mom...
I lit the candle and was cleaning off an area that had some of my mother's things on it...a picture of Mom and me...a couple of patches that said "Grandma Alice"...a cariture card I had made for her the last Christmas my dad was alive...a beautiful blue butterfly necklace...booties that perhaps had been made by my grandmother and worn my me...the bracelet I wore in the hospital as an infant...
As I found these items I sort of made a little "shrine" in the center of my table...placing each items artistically around the picture of My Mother and Me....
The song "walking in the Air" was playing (which is one of my favorite ones because often I walk in the moonlight) and I was just singing with you and making a hot beverage and working away...
Before I knew it...the song "The Bells of Christmas" began and its power overtook me...the music and the lyrics just swept me away...away to the sadness of my Christmas last year...of the pain I (and my seven sibling) were enduring as we struggled to step into Christmas...
There is a freedom in that song...and I thank you for opening it to me...it touched my heart in a very special way...it allowed me the present pain...the aching of knowing that this Christmas would be different...that someday...the bells would ring again...that hope was alive...and in the future...patiently waiting for a time to reveal itself...
It is marvelous song...I wrote to everyone I had on my email list and told them to find your song today...to ponder the depths of its meaning...to allow it to touch their hearts...Thank you for the grace of your genius in my life today...
Simply,
Mary
Posted by: Mary | December 20, 2005 at 05:11 AM