MUSIC MONDAY: Ultimate “Soul of the Season” Christmas Soundtrack – Deluxe Expanded Edition (LISTEN)

by Jeff Meier (FB: Jeff.Meier.90)

We hope that all of you in the Good Black News family are enjoying the holiday season and all the prep that goes along with it.

As many longtime readers know, Good Black News couldn’t survive the holidays without our Spotify Christmas music mixes playing in the background.

So, today, we’ve updated one of our most popular playlists ever to share with you again, and offer you the chance to deep dive into holiday music that is a little different than the rotation of 20 Andy Williams, Burl Ives and Bing Crosby tunes you might hear on the regular radio.

Back for Year Three is our “Ultimate Soul of the Season Christmas Soundtrack – Deluxe Expanded Edition“ – now filled with more than 60 new tracks, and lasting overall for over 34 hours.

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While you’re wrapping, decorating, baking, or just sipping eggnog by the fireplace, our playlist is a go-to that can last all season long.

Of course you can set it on shuffle and never know what’s coming next, or just let it play through.  We’ve carefully planned it out so that if you just let it play, you’ll get a mix of tempos and artists and soulful styles singing songs you know by heart mixed in with forgotten coulda-been classics and brand new originals that are classics in the making.

As a reminder, musically we’ve set out to create our own ‘radio’-like Christmas playlist, but as only GBN could, comprised entirely of songs performed by Black artists (or in the rare case of Robin Thicke, artists singing in a soulful tradition).

Of course, we’ve got Donny Hathaway, The Jackson 5, The Temptations‘ “Silent Night,” and plenty of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, and yes, Mariah Carey.

But as we did last year, we’ve refreshed the playlist this year with a bunch of new tracks – titles that are freshly released in 2022, as well as older tunes that are new discoveries for us, and even some famous songs that had never before appeared on Spotify.

In the era of streaming music, new Christmas music is being released much differently than it used to be.  There are still a few new full-length Christmas ‘albums’ being issued.

Among them are collections from Alicia Keys, Regina Belle, and recent Emmy groundbreaker Sheryl Lee Ralph (working with gospel producer/artist B. Slade on her new release entitled ‘Sleigh.’).

We’ve got songs from all of the new releases above (although currently Alicia Keys has only made one single from her album available on Spotify).

More often, though, artists are releasing new holiday music just as singles or short collections available only via streaming services, no longer as CDs/vinyl that you can find in stores.  The ease of putting such music out has also enabled a plethora of artists to join the holiday music bonanza just by dropping a new track.

For our veteran soul music listeners, you’ll find new tracks this year from such names as Jody Watley (a lovely ‘Christmas Time Is Here’), Ledisi (‘Home for Christmas), Vivian Green (‘Spread the Love’), Deborah Cox, Chris Brown, Jhene Aiko, Mickey Guyton (Frozen’s ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’), Macy Gray (a fun, tropical ‘Blue Christmas’), and Mr. Christmas himself, Johnny Mathis (simplified piano-bar versions of songs he’s recorded in the past, including ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ and his hit ‘When a Child Is Born’).

We’ve got new gospel-infused Christmas tracks from Deitrick Haddon and from Tina Campbell (of Mary Mary fame) and her husband Teddy (including the lively ‘Our House’). And Lalah Hathaway has finally done what many have been waiting for her to do for so long – through the magic of recording technology, she has released a duet version of ‘This Christmas’ with her father Donny.

Veteran fans will also be excited that, finally, Spotify has access to two iconic soulful holiday anthems – the O’Jays 1973 track ‘Christmas Ain’t Christmas (Without the One You Love)’ and Ray Charles ‘80s track ‘That Spirit of Christmas’ (made famous in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation).  In fact, Ray’s whole ‘That Spirit of Christmas’ LP is finally available on Spotify for the first time.

But perhaps we’re most excited by the infusion of new artists into the list.

The old ways of breaking into the music world are long gone…and now, via a global service like Spotify, it’s so much easier to tap into artists from all over the world.

Cesar Sampson is a Black Austrian who gained success via the Eurovision Song Contest and has a number of holiday songs.  Born in Zimbabwe, Tkay Maidza has built an audience of over 800 thousand monthly Spotify listeners, predominantly in her now home base of Australia.

Kelli Leigh is British and has garnered fans through her vocals on dance music hits. England’s Kingdom Choir earned some renown from their performances at Harry & Meghan’s wedding.

And Micah Edwards, a self-described Texas soul artist, has found nearly 800k monthly listeners largely in Southeast Asia.

The Committed and Howard University’s Afro Blue are a capella groups who competed on the reality show The Sing Off, while The Curtis Family C-Notes and Victory Brinker each hail from America’s Got Talent and India Carney from The Voice.

Among other relative newcomers to this list – many of them already have hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of monthly Spotify listeners, sometimes self-built audiences through YouTube or social media followings.

Trinidad Cardona (5 million listeners), August 08 (1.3 million), Jenevieve (1.2 million), DaniLeigh (3.1 million), Kirby (1.5 million) and former Disney star Coco Jones (800k monthly listeners) are just a few of these very popular names to look out for.

It’s also great to keep an ear out for some new artists who haven’t yet built an audience of millions – and so we’re also happy introduce you to some artists that we consider to be emerging discoveries.

Nashville’s R&B throwback band DeRobert and the Half-Truths and Spain’s Nacion Funk All-Stars featuring Koko-Jean Davis are both rocking some fun Christmas tunes worthy of checking out this season.

And Broadway performer, back-up singer and TV actress Patrice Covington (A League of Their Own) delivers a rollicking “My Favorite Things.”

Whether you enjoy the throwback stars or the newcomers, there is something for all fans of soul through the decades on this holiday playlist – we hope as you celebrate Christmas, you’ll make this your soundtrack to the season.  Happy Holidays!