One That Sounds Familiar But Also a Bit Different

Song 439: The week on the playlist you’ll find Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town by Bruce Springsteen, written by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie, and you can catch a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I enjoyed lots of Christmas music, both religious and secular, when growing up, and I became obsessed with RnR after The Beatles and their fellow British invaders rocked my world in the winter of 1964, but up to the middle of the 1970s, I heard very little crossover between those two musical spheres. However, during the Santa season one year (probably 1977, though it could have been the year before) this rocking version of a 1930s holiday classic came sailing across the radio waves, and it really impressed me that Bruce had figured out such a cool way to rewrap an old standard that predated RnR. His moves inspired a vague idea that someday I might try to write my own Yuletide song, and I came up with a title. A few years later, hearing my good friend and fellow singer-songwriter Jeff Larson play me his newly-written Home for the Holidays, I felt that the time had come to give Commoner's Carole its wings. Not long after, when wondering about how to present my own First Noel tune, I started playing around with solo acoustic guitar versions of familiar melodies I had grown up with, and the vision of Holiday Card began to take shape. Now, just a bit under four decades later, I finally finished the record, and you find the CD page by clicking on the title. Also, you can find the Commoner's Carole Lyric Video by clicking on that title. Merry, Merry, Happy, Happy!