Music Review // Ben Dunnill "One More December Song"

 

"One More December Song" begins with a piano intro that you know just sounds like Christmas.  It's not quite "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", but the idea of the holiday season is felt within the tone of the piano.   This song carries on with only that piano piece and the vocals, which very much makes it feel like a Christmas song as well because there has often been that idea of a family just gathering around the piano and playing Christmas songs.  (I actually think I relate a lot of that back with Garfield, but there are certainly other examples of it)

While this song does have that Christmas vibe down, Ben Dunnill sings about how "Oh, this Christmas, ain't a Christmas, without you".  It's interesting to me how people always think that Christmas is such a happy time of year when that simply isn't the case for everyone.   I asked a co-worker once if they were excited for the upcoming and they said no because it always reminded them of their father dying and other events which were just not pleasant.  So, on one hand, I like to think of this song as being that gentle reminder that not everyone is going to have that Christmas spirit and that's okay.

Now how you choose to take the idea of this song being about missing someone on Christmas is up to you.  Maybe it's because the person has died, but maybe it's just because it was a romantic relationship that ended.  Maybe it's a child who grew up and went off to college- which I can kind of get from the lyrics: "But Christmas this year won't be the same to me / The room is so empty and blue".  It's always such a tough thing for parents to see their kids happy for Christmas but then grow up and not always come home for the holidays. However you might take this, if you've never felt a sense of loss around the holidays just consider yourself lucky.

When it comes to Christmas music, a lot of it can be happy and just upbeat.  This is appropriate because it is a season to celebrate, as they say.  But there are songs out there which exist about skipping Christmas this year, though they are maybe only 10-15% of the overall holiday songs.   If nothing else, I take this song as a representation of the minority of Christmas songs out there and another one which you can add to your playlist of songs that are for the holidays but not in a cheery way.   These are the genre of holiday songs which I like the most.