Summer Is a Christmas Time of Year

What makes a great Christmas song? Partly, the ability to record it in summer:

One of the hardest things about recording Christmas songs, says Nick Lowe, is the time of year you have to make them.

In summer.

"We thought, 'We'll never be able to do this. We'll have to put all this junk up in the studio to get ourselves in the mood -- Christmas trees and fake presents and all that sort of stuff,' " says Lowe, the "Cruel to Be Kind" singer who released an album of holiday tunes, "Quality Street," in 2013. 

The idea, Lowe has said, was to "do a record which ... gets into the spirit of Christmas -- that was not cynical and was big-hearted and warm-spirited."

This sounds true to me; in the summer of 2005 Marah hunkered down in my loft to make one of my all-time favorite Christmas albums. I'd come home from work and we'd all be drenched in sweat, but thanks to ornaments and lighting and the motherfucking Christmas spirit the recording got done. And it was great.

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