Now that we’re more than halfway through June, that means Leon Day is just around the corner. That’s June 25th, six months until Christmas Day. And not to wish the days away, but just past that, it will be July - and for many Christmas podcasters (and Christmas fans in general), that means Christmas In July!
For the last two years, I’ve done something on the Sounds of Christmas I hadn’t done since I launched the station in 2007 - I played nearly every song in our library in alphabetical order.
I have added hundreds of songs since this time last year, to the point that I noticed that, this year, it will take 5 more hours just to get to Mariah Carey’s "All I Want For Christmas Is You"! Obviously, it’s safe to say that the Sounds of Christmas from A To Z will be a lot different, and much longer, than last year’s. And while it is a lot of work, it does seem to get such a nice response, it was a no-brainer to continue it this year, which, I guess, now makes it a tradition.
Starting on July 1st, at 6am Eastern, I’ll be giving you the Sounds of Christmas from A to Z, playing almost every song in our library in alphabetical order by song title. And, at this point, I honestly have no idea how long it will go on. Last year, it took over 15 hours just to get through all the songs that start with A (which is two hours longer than the year before). And this year it looks like it will be another six hours until the first songs that starts with B.
So, a couple things about this.
First, here’s how I came up with my list. I took my master library list and put it in a Google doc, then I set it to alphabetize all the entries by song title. For the most part, I think this worked okay. In some instances, punctuation in the song titles made it tricky. Sometimes, I was able to move those songs around where they made the most sense, but that probably wasn’t always the case. So you may hear a song that seems out of place, and that could be the reason.
Or it could be other things. Sometimes artists change the name of a song they’re covering. "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" becomes, simply, "A Merry Little Christmas". "My Grown Up Christmas List" becomes just "Grown Up Christmas List". And "Run Rudolph Run" is sometimes listed as "Run Run Rudolph". I’m sure there are plenty of others, but those are the ones that leap to mind.
I tried to deal with that as best I could, but this was a huge undertaking. Another reason that, upon occasion, there may be a song that seems out of place. And while I tried to get all the versions of particular songs together, sometimes I just didn’t catch the differences in titles, so it’s possible the same song (by different artists) might pop up in two different places. Maybe even three.
That said, I’m not playing every different version of every single song. I did consider that in the beginning when I first started doing this, and I thought it might be interesting to hear so many different artists with their own interpretations of each song. Then I realized that, if I did that, there would be over nine hours of different versions of “Silver Bells”.
I like “Silver Bells". A lot. Maybe even more than most. But I don’t think even I would listen to nine hours of it.
So I went through and picked one particular version of songs which had multiple versions, to kind of represent the song. This year, for the most part, I went with the first version (or at least the oldest I could find). That didn’t always work, and it wasn’t even always the case. But that was my plan when I started putting this together this year, and I think that, most of the time, I stuck to it.
I didn’t include Chanukah, Kwanza or New Years songs. Or Thanksgiving or Halloween songs. However, Christmas songs that also included elements of Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Thanksgiving and/or Halloween are part of the A to Z event.
For songs that started with numbers, I simply spelled out the numbers, and you’ll find them accordingly. I also took out a lot of the the’s and a’s that started a song title. But not all. I made a lot of judgment calls on that, taking away the ones I thought were unnecessary, while leaving others I thought were important. Like “The Christmas Song”. That’s how everyone refers to it, not just “Christmas Song”, so that the stayed. And when I could, I tried to respect artists’ decisions on the titles of their songs, so some of those retained the a’s and the’s. You get the idea.
I included lots of medleys, and some of the songs included in those medleys will be found elsewhere in the entire A to Z event. I went back and forth on this, and finally decided that medleys are just more popular in Christmas music than in any other genre, so excluding them seemed wrong. That’s why you may hear "Let It Snow" followed by a medley of "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland".
I may have made some mistakes. I probably did. As with the past two years, this was a much bigger thing to put together than I thought it would be. So some songs might come up in the wrong place. Some songs might play more than once. And some might not show up at all. None of that is on purpose. Just human error. My apologies if there’s a song you want to hear and somehow it doesn’t show up (or you miss it because it’s in the wrong place).
I also get that you may not agree with the choices I made as far as which version of a particular song gets played. In most cases, as I said, I tried to go with the first version, but a couple times I shook things up a little to pick something you might not expect.
I know that this isn’t for everybody. When some people listen to Christmas music, they want Bing’s “White Christmas”. They want Nat King Cole and Elvis. For others it’s Mariah Carey and Kelly Clarkson. And while all of those artists do appear, more than once, in the Sounds of Christmas from A to Z, it will take a while to get to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. And if you miss Mariah’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” on that first day, you won’t get to hear it again for a long tine.
But, if you love Christmas music, all kinds of Christmas music, you’ll get a real taste of what I mean when I say the Sounds of Christmas plays the best variety of Christmas music. You’ll hear lots of songs you may never have heard before, and you’ll hear lots of artists that you may have never heard before, either. But I think you’re going to like it (at least I hope you do)!
I’ll probably send periodic updates through social media to let you know where we are as the month of July rolls on (and possibly August).
I’m set to kick this off on July 1st with Faith Hill’s “A Baby Changes Everything”, and then keep on going until at some point we get to “Zydeco Christmas” by C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band. It seems like it took a couple weeks to do this last year, and there are a lot more songs this time around, so it should take, but since I’m still programming it all, I really don’t know. I guess we’ll find out together.
And lastly, I started this post mentioning that I’ve added hundreds of songs since I did this last year. Those weren’t all new songs from 2024. There were lots of old releases that came back into print, or were finally released for the first time (or in a slightly different configuration). So I also added a lot of songs that hadn’t been available for a long time (and in some cases, songs that had never been released in the first place). And I also came across a few surprises - songs I didn’t know existed, or rare songs that I hadn’t been able to find before.
For the last two years, I’ve done something on the Sounds of Christmas I hadn’t done since I launched the station in 2007 - I played nearly every song in our library in alphabetical order.
I have added hundreds of songs since this time last year, to the point that I noticed that, this year, it will take 5 more hours just to get to Mariah Carey’s "All I Want For Christmas Is You"! Obviously, it’s safe to say that the Sounds of Christmas from A To Z will be a lot different, and much longer, than last year’s. And while it is a lot of work, it does seem to get such a nice response, it was a no-brainer to continue it this year, which, I guess, now makes it a tradition.
Starting on July 1st, at 6am Eastern, I’ll be giving you the Sounds of Christmas from A to Z, playing almost every song in our library in alphabetical order by song title. And, at this point, I honestly have no idea how long it will go on. Last year, it took over 15 hours just to get through all the songs that start with A (which is two hours longer than the year before). And this year it looks like it will be another six hours until the first songs that starts with B.
So, a couple things about this.
First, here’s how I came up with my list. I took my master library list and put it in a Google doc, then I set it to alphabetize all the entries by song title. For the most part, I think this worked okay. In some instances, punctuation in the song titles made it tricky. Sometimes, I was able to move those songs around where they made the most sense, but that probably wasn’t always the case. So you may hear a song that seems out of place, and that could be the reason.
Or it could be other things. Sometimes artists change the name of a song they’re covering. "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" becomes, simply, "A Merry Little Christmas". "My Grown Up Christmas List" becomes just "Grown Up Christmas List". And "Run Rudolph Run" is sometimes listed as "Run Run Rudolph". I’m sure there are plenty of others, but those are the ones that leap to mind.
I tried to deal with that as best I could, but this was a huge undertaking. Another reason that, upon occasion, there may be a song that seems out of place. And while I tried to get all the versions of particular songs together, sometimes I just didn’t catch the differences in titles, so it’s possible the same song (by different artists) might pop up in two different places. Maybe even three.
That said, I’m not playing every different version of every single song. I did consider that in the beginning when I first started doing this, and I thought it might be interesting to hear so many different artists with their own interpretations of each song. Then I realized that, if I did that, there would be over nine hours of different versions of “Silver Bells”.
I like “Silver Bells". A lot. Maybe even more than most. But I don’t think even I would listen to nine hours of it.
So I went through and picked one particular version of songs which had multiple versions, to kind of represent the song. This year, for the most part, I went with the first version (or at least the oldest I could find). That didn’t always work, and it wasn’t even always the case. But that was my plan when I started putting this together this year, and I think that, most of the time, I stuck to it.
I didn’t include Chanukah, Kwanza or New Years songs. Or Thanksgiving or Halloween songs. However, Christmas songs that also included elements of Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Thanksgiving and/or Halloween are part of the A to Z event.
For songs that started with numbers, I simply spelled out the numbers, and you’ll find them accordingly. I also took out a lot of the the’s and a’s that started a song title. But not all. I made a lot of judgment calls on that, taking away the ones I thought were unnecessary, while leaving others I thought were important. Like “The Christmas Song”. That’s how everyone refers to it, not just “Christmas Song”, so that the stayed. And when I could, I tried to respect artists’ decisions on the titles of their songs, so some of those retained the a’s and the’s. You get the idea.
I included lots of medleys, and some of the songs included in those medleys will be found elsewhere in the entire A to Z event. I went back and forth on this, and finally decided that medleys are just more popular in Christmas music than in any other genre, so excluding them seemed wrong. That’s why you may hear "Let It Snow" followed by a medley of "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland".
I may have made some mistakes. I probably did. As with the past two years, this was a much bigger thing to put together than I thought it would be. So some songs might come up in the wrong place. Some songs might play more than once. And some might not show up at all. None of that is on purpose. Just human error. My apologies if there’s a song you want to hear and somehow it doesn’t show up (or you miss it because it’s in the wrong place).
I also get that you may not agree with the choices I made as far as which version of a particular song gets played. In most cases, as I said, I tried to go with the first version, but a couple times I shook things up a little to pick something you might not expect.
I know that this isn’t for everybody. When some people listen to Christmas music, they want Bing’s “White Christmas”. They want Nat King Cole and Elvis. For others it’s Mariah Carey and Kelly Clarkson. And while all of those artists do appear, more than once, in the Sounds of Christmas from A to Z, it will take a while to get to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. And if you miss Mariah’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” on that first day, you won’t get to hear it again for a long tine.
But, if you love Christmas music, all kinds of Christmas music, you’ll get a real taste of what I mean when I say the Sounds of Christmas plays the best variety of Christmas music. You’ll hear lots of songs you may never have heard before, and you’ll hear lots of artists that you may have never heard before, either. But I think you’re going to like it (at least I hope you do)!
I’ll probably send periodic updates through social media to let you know where we are as the month of July rolls on (and possibly August).
I’m set to kick this off on July 1st with Faith Hill’s “A Baby Changes Everything”, and then keep on going until at some point we get to “Zydeco Christmas” by C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band. It seems like it took a couple weeks to do this last year, and there are a lot more songs this time around, so it should take, but since I’m still programming it all, I really don’t know. I guess we’ll find out together.
And lastly, I started this post mentioning that I’ve added hundreds of songs since I did this last year. Those weren’t all new songs from 2024. There were lots of old releases that came back into print, or were finally released for the first time (or in a slightly different configuration). So I also added a lot of songs that hadn’t been available for a long time (and in some cases, songs that had never been released in the first place). And I also came across a few surprises - songs I didn’t know existed, or rare songs that I hadn’t been able to find before.
Anyway, despite all the caveats and possible mistakes, I hope the whole thing is fun, and that, if you do tune in, you like what you hear.
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