A blog about music from my unique perspective (also a spot for some poetry I’ve written) |
Track Three for "12 Days of "Christmas"" I've always liked Josh Turner's distinctive deep voice, and in fact I featured his Will You Go With Me in my February 2024 "The Soundtrack of Your Life" blog posts. It was last year, while thinking about Xmas songs and how to build my offline playlist, when I suddenly imagined Josh's voice in my head, singing The First Noel. And I was like "ooh, that sounds perfect!" And went to check if he really did sing it. He did, and it's just the way I expected it would sound. He treats it with the respect it's due (unlike his treatment of Joy to the World… see a screenshot of my personal music journal below.) I'm kind of fussy about songs, and oftentimes his discography is either too cheesy and secular for me, or else it's old-fashioned gospel music which I don't really have a connection to. (Long Black Train is a favorite, but that's another story…) I've always been familiar with The First Noel; I remember as a kid I had a little booklet of Christmas carol sheet music from the local newspaper, and I would examine all the songs and see which of them I thought were up to my poetic standards. Since we didn't actually listen to much Christmas music, I quite literally had no clue as to melody and went solely based on the lyrics, which resulted in some peculiarities as I memorized lyrics which turned out to sound entirely different from how I thought. Long story… These days, The First Noel is a song I look forward to by any artist on public airwaves. This particular version is the one I have in my playlist, alongside the Simply Three instrumental. Words: 294. |