The nation singers lament a Christmas season divided by distance and heartbreak
Nation Christmas songs could be as saccharine as a vacation cookie. Not “Lonely on Christmas,” Brit Taylor and Mike and the Moonpies’ splendidly melancholy new collab. “You understand it’s time to make a change, when your entire household’s estranged,” Taylor and the Moonpies’ Mike Harmeier harmonize, lamenting the bodily and emotional distance between a pair.
The nation singers — Taylor’s from Kentucky, the Moonpies from Texas — deliver the isolation to life within the track’s music video too. Taylor filmed her half remotely at a content material home in Nashville, whereas Harmeier, in an outsized Santa jacket and a drunk-on-Christmas countenance that’s each comical and heartbreaking, posted up on the Satan’s Spine Tavern in Fischer, Texas.
“The polarity of our vocal kinds simply matches the track and the temper,” Taylor mentioned of duetting with Harmeier. Taylor produced the recording with Adam Chaffins; Jason White wrote “Lonely on Christmas.”
The track is one among handful of notably very good country-music vacation recordings this 12 months: Chris Canterbury’s cowl of John Prine’s “Christmas in Jail,” Hailey Whitters’ model of Randy Travis’ “Meet Me Beneath the Mistletoe,” John Driskell Hopkins’ tackle “Snow” from White Christmas, Elvie Shane’s kingly “Blue Christmas,” and Jamie Kent’s Rat Pack unique “Toboggan Tumbling.”
Taylor will carry out on the 2023 Railbird Competition in Kentucky subsequent June; whereas Harmeier returns to the Satan’s Spine for a one-man Christmas present on Dec. 16.