Phoebe Bridgers is no stranger to getting into the holiday spirit. No, seriously. Last year she released her version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and this year she brings us a lesser known holiday song as she covers McCarthy Trenching's "Christmas Song". She brought in the legendary Jackson Browne to help record the backing vocals for this unique track. Bridgers told the story of how this collaboration came together:
“McCarthy Trenching is singer-songwriter Dan McCarthy’s band. We played a show together in Omaha this last year. They named the band after the trenching company owned by Dan’s uncle so they could sell those t-shirts instead of having to make their own. The first time I heard this song it hit me like a ton of bricks. A lot of McCarthy Trenching songs do that. It’s not that often that I hear a Christmas song that doesn’t make me want to quit music. I played a show in L.A. around the holidays last year where I covered it for the first time. Jackson Browne was there, and he came up to me after the show to tell me how much he loved the song. A couple days later, Dan got a Bandcamp notification on his desktop computer that someone paid 50 bucks for his record and wrote a nice note and signed it Jackson Browne. He thought someone was fucking with him. So when I decided to record a version of the song, I knew who I wanted to sing on it. Plus, I have wanted to make music with Jackson as long as I’ve wanted to make music.”
Listen to both Bridgers' version and the original below.
