Sean Griffin – I’m In Love for Christmas
Christmas songs are a bit like detective novels or tunes about love. At some point, every writer has to try their hand at one. Just look at the bibliography of your favourite writer and you’re bound to discover a novel in which a Bogart-like figure dodges bullets and solves crime while smoking cigarettes. Just dig through the discography of any of your favourite artists and you’ll discover a Christmas jingle.
And while most people, just like Sean Griffin, whether they admit it or not, have a soft spot for Christmas and the American-born mythology around it, because of the aforementioned reasons, there’s a mighty great inflation of holiday tunes. Searching through the available collections is a bit like looking for a guitar pick in a house that’s just been blown over by a hurricane.
Sean Griffin’s dropped his Santa hat in the ring and wants to keep things simple. His holiday single is called “I’m in Love for Christmas,” and it’s a bit of an earworm. Christmas songs are usually made successful by beautiful melodies, clever hooks and the feeling that the performer is able to give that everything is going to be alright. This song has all those things which make you want to be a little less cynical about the Christmas holidays and makes you want to start getting ready in November.
Dennis Hauck – Natural Heart
Rock’ n’ roll songwriters who spent their youth presenting themselves as emotionless outlaws have always had a tough decision to make later in life. Sure, none of them ever considered that they might make it that far. And, frankly, all of them believed that their charm and dastardly deeds would keep them unchanged. But that’s not how life works.
Whether it was Lou Reed writing love songs to New York, Leonard Cohen advertising meditation, or Chuck Berry hugging fans after concerts, many great villains turned into hopeless romantics once they ran out of road. But, I wager, for many of them it is the work that they did during this period, or the impression that they left, which will end up becoming their legacy.
Dennis Hauck knows his way around a tune. This is what makes “Natural Heart” a well-crafted, symmetrical verse-to-hook country jingle so pleasant to hear. The lyrics flow nicely, and Hauck sings it all with the confidence of a man who knows he is liked. But, just listen closely, and you can hear doubts and a real need to be liked hidden inside those softly sung lines. “Natural Heart” is the love song of the desperado who’s made it out without a bullet through the heart, but wounded from love nonetheless.
