As an amateur songwriter*, I’ve always wanted to write a Christmas song. And since Christmas songs are usually filled with clichés and my songs seem to always have their fair share of them, I probably should have been able to write one prior to last year.
Anyway, “It’s Christmas Time Again” was originally written and recorded on my MacBook (with GarageBand) in late 2011. I posted it to Facebook, where it received some positive comments. I recently updated it a bit and uploaded it to Soundcloud. And, yes, it is obviously influenced by Christmas songs from the late 1970s and 1980s, including a nod to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with the closing segment. But I’m a huge Midge Ure fan and never feel he gets enough credit for his role as the primary writer of that song, so that’s my tip of the hat to Midge.
Since it’s now officially the 2012 Christmas season, here is my Christmas song…
It’s Christmas Time Again – Brian Kelley
©2011 Brian J. Kelley
(* While I really am an amateur songwriter, I always have to remind myself that my friend Christian Beach used lyrics I wrote for a song we worked on during our techno-industrial days in the early 1990s as the chorus for “What Does It Mean to You?” by his mid-1990s band Slave of Id. That song did receive a fair amount of airplay on WHTG 106.3 FM in New Jersey in 1993/94. So, thanks to Christian, I have been able to enjoy hearing lyrics I’ve written on the radio…and that’s pretty cool. I think that’s why my favorite scene in the movie That Thing You Do is when all the band members—The Oneders!—and Liv Tyler’s character get excited about hearing their song on the radio. I can totally relate to that.)
Brian Kelley 