Keepsake of the Week: “Christmas is Right Here” by Lori McKenna
“Christmas is Right Here” is the first holiday EP from singer/songwriter Lori McKenna and is this week’s #KOTW.
In this semi-weekly blog series, we post our favorite new or re-discovered releases in independent music, our Keepsake of the Week, or #KOTW.
There are two disclaimers to this review that you should know right off the bat: 1) I am obsessed with Lori McKenna, and 2) I am obsessed with Christmas. This review is biased. However, it is still worth reading, because Lori is always worth hearing.
In case you haven’t heard of her, Lori McKenna is the heart (and queen) of Americana songwriting capital, Nashville. She is the perfect example of an independent artist who plays music for living, but makes a living by writing for other people. She has won and been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards for songs she wrote for Little Big Town (“Girl Crush”), Tim McGraw (“Humble & Kind”), the 2019 film “A Star Is Born” (“Always Remember Us This Way”), and The Highwomen (“Crowded Table”). Most recently, a song she co-wrote with Taylor Swift in 2011, “I Bet You Think About Me,” was finally released on “Red (Taylor’s Version)” featuring Chris Stapleton and there is even a music video with 23 million views. McKenna is the artist and woman behind country legends, but to those of us who know her music and solo performance, she is the biggest legend of them all.
Throughout her discography, and especially in her three most recent records, many of McKenna’s songs address the act of aging. I first discovered her music when her 2016 album “The Bird & The Rifle” (2017) was the record of the month in Drew Holcomb’s Magnolia Record Club. This is the record that includes “Humble & Kind,” a lyrical lesson on life imbued with McKenna’s earned wisdom. Finding her in my early twenties felt like I had the comfort of home and advice of my mother with me at all times, warning me that “He ain’t gonna save ya / That’s just what you think his eyes say” and reminding me that “There’s real love out there down the road” (both lines from my favorite song of hers, “Halfway Home”). In her record “The Tree” (2018), McKenna taught me to let go of my homesickness yet cherish my youth through songs like “The Lot Behind St. Mary’s” and how to hold on to my strength in “You Can’t Break A Woman.” Before “The Balladeer” (2020) was released, I saw McKenna play live at the now closed SubCulture in New York, where she mostly played through her earlier work but also previewed her song “When You’re My Age,” a somber reflection on the cycle of mothering. “You’ll outgrow your shoes / You’ll outgrow your bed,” she sings, “You’ll outgrow this house / Just don’t forget / You’re still gonna be my baby / Even when you’re my age.” McKenna’s music occupies a space between past and present, like that box of old cards that lives under your bed, or the holiday traditions we revisit once a year.
It is unsurprising, then, that McKenna’s first holiday EP is made up mostly of original songs that search for the Christmas spirit through changing traditions, moving homes, struggling careers, and breaking families. The EP opens with its only cover of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” but the song is stripped and simplified so that it sounds almost like a lullaby. Lyrics that haven’t hit me before stand out here, especially “We’re here tonight / And that’s enough.” McKenna’s voice carries the weight of her wisdom and the finger-picking acoustic guitar moves along the time. The original songs come next, starting with a signature ballad, “Christmas Without Crying,” an ode to family traditions and the sadness of nostalgia. “Even if you wouldn’t change one single thing about your life,” sings McKenna in the song that honors her late mother, “It’s a matter of time / You can’t make it to Christmas without crying.” I’ve found in my adulthood that most people who love the holidays, including myself, are those who have strong childhood memories of them, but as McKenna knows so well, we are also the ones who can’t stand it when our traditions change.
My favorite song on the EP is “North Pole,” a classic Americana song that travels from state to state and was written with frequent co-writer, Hillary Lindsey. The song starts in Lindsey’s hometown of Dallas before moving to McKenna’s in Massachusetts and then their shared town of Nashville. Many of my own Christmas traditions—stockings, mom’s cooking, waiting in pajamas at the top of the stairs—are mentioned here, but they’re “as far away as the North Pole” because those houses are gone, those hometowns are different, those people aren’t there. For anyone who associates the holidays with a past they cannot recreate, this song is for us. But it is also more optimistic than its preceding track, ending with the EP’s title and a reminder to us all that “Christmas is right here / If you just believe.”
The holidays, like anything in life, are what we make of them. This record is a testament to that, shown no stronger than on its closing track, “Grateful.” McKenna has always known how to sing of her faith from a personal and honest place that isn’t proselytizing, a task made more difficult with holiday music, and on “Grateful” McKenna takes us wherever we feel most comfortable: a church, perhaps, or maybe just with our family. “And all the love that I’ve been given / Wish I could return tenfold at least,” McKenna sings, “Because there isn’t one ungrateful bone in my body.” The holidays may look different this year—as they must and always seem to—but whether you’re in Texas or Tennessee, in your childhood home or making a new home, with your family or just remembering them, there is always something or someone worth celebrating.
Stream “Christmas is Right Here” everywhere now.
Lori McKenna.
