An eclectic high-quality quintet brings us close to the finish line on this fourth and final Sunday of Advent:
#20 - Sleigh Ride (Ella Fitzgerald): It’s a coin flip between this jazz standard and the Boston Pops’ playful rendition. Either one ranks near the top of secular holiday songs.
#19 - Coventry Carol (Westminster Cathedral Choir): Lully-lullah, begins the 16th-century sober retelling of Herod’s massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2.
#18 - Carol of the Bells (Pentatonix): While the list tends toward the novel and less familiar, renditions like this one mark a welcome surrender to the upbeat and popular.
#17 - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Phoebe Bridgers): A delicately voiced, indie-style remake that includes the original “muddle through somehow” lyric.
#16 - Sussex Carol (Univ. of North Texas Choir & Orch.): “On Christmas night all Christians sing,” lightly opens this British piece with a long and varied life.
For those who want to see the full Countdown, check it out on YouTube or Spotify. Come back tomorrow for five more selections…
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