Holiday tunes to wrap up your 2024

JT Griffith is someone thinks a lot about music, especially Christmas music.

“One of the things I was thinking about was what my ‘era’ is,” he said. “I saw Taylor Swift play in Seattle, and I saw a group of people who were dressed up as Christmas trees, and I thought ‘This is an incredible cultural moment that people feel comfortable enough to take an obscure little Christmas song and dress up like that for a concert.‘”

So what did he land on? “Especially today, I’m very much in my ‘Christmas era.’”

Griffith has long been a Christmas music curator for OPB, KMHD, and the Oregon Zoo’s Zoo Lights and spent 15 years as Nike’s in-house music supervisor. He’s now the creative director and founder of LIMINAL Music and is bringing a curated list of holiday tunes to OPB for the fifth year.

Griffith spoke with OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori about finding holiday vinyl from Japan, scoring an art installation with Christmas tunes, and being perpetually in his “Christmas era.”

Highlights from the holiday playlist:

Icelandic, jazz singer Laufey

“I think my most favorite release from this year is from the Icelandic, jazz singer Laufey, who put out a digital EP of holiday songs and released them on two different 7-inch vinyl records. They are just amazing standard songs recorded in a beautiful, smoky jazz pop vocalist way. And while they’re not necessarily disruptive to Christmas music or completely new, they are just absolute bangers. They’re just beautiful songs.”

Say She She covers Marvin Gaye

“I’m really excited to share this one too because it’s a brand new recording just released by Karma Chief Records, which is through Coal Mine Records in Loveland, Ohio. They put out a purple-colored seven-inch record with ‘Purple Snowflakes’, which was first recorded by Marvin Gaye. People will find it familiar and it’s a really great version.”

Bleachers melancholy Christmas

“Bleachers is Jack Antonoff, who was previously in the band Fun and has come to prominence for his band Bleachers, a great band inspired by Bruce Springsteen. But [he’s] also as been a trusted production partner with Taylor Swift and recently was dubbed producer of the decade. This song about not wanting to reconcile with someone in the Christmas season, so it’s a little sad, but it makes you wonder like with Taylor, who’s this about?"

Jason Kelce and Stevie Nicks collab

“This is the third year in a row that there has been A Philly Special Christmas charity album done out of Philadelphia. When the first one happened, I thought, ‘Oh, interesting, it’s being done by some football players.’ It was a collaboration with the Philadelphia Eagles and Philly musicians. Year two, I was like, ‘Oh, I know who these players are and one of them seems to want to date Taylor Swift,’ and then year three, [Travis Kelce] is dating Taylor Swift, and the song that we should check out is his brother Jason Kelce singing one of my favorite all-time Christmas songs, ‘Maybe This Christmas’ by Ron Sexsmith with guest vocalist of Stevie Nicks.”

James Brown on Jackpot Records

“I think it’s surprising to think of a James Brown record as being from Portland, but Jackpot Records has been reissuing a lot of really great music over the last couple of years — really good pressings of cool records — and they re-released a three LP set of James Brown music. One’s a little moody, one’s really fun and soulful, like a live James Brown kind of vibe but in the studio. It’s mastered by Kevin Gray, who’s the most famous mastering engineer who cuts things from analog sources. And if it’s not here, you probably don’t need it because it’s three full LPs of dope soul."

The hunt for rare Christmas vinyl

“Over the last couple of years, especially through the pandemic, jazz and Japanese music really helped me keep it together and get through stressful, high-anxiety times. As I’ve learned more about Japanese jazz, I’ve realized that some of the really good vintage, retro Japanese Christmas music was never re-released, so it’s very, very hard to find. But this year, I found a 10-inch record that is a collaboration called ‘Holiday Gift from MOON.’

Moon Haewon is a South Korean jazz singer and she’s singing with a pianist named Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, who is one of the most legendary jazz piano players from the Three Blind Mice collective. It’s just a really beautiful, immaculately recorded [album]. It’s really simple and really beautiful and very international, so I thought that would be worth sharing.

I also have some [records] from Oregon Christmas festivals, from West Albany High School or the Portland Boys Choir singing holiday songs that are just a little preservation of the past. You can imagine what that was like in 1974 to be at a holiday concert with maybe your kids or you were singing at it — something very local and personal that brought people families together for that moment and it was preserved on vinyl.

My vinyl treasure finds this year range across a lot of different genres, but includes some cartoon and superhero Christmas records as well as early ‘78 recordings of ’Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' which at some point was a song that didn’t exist and so when it came out, there was a lot of attention to doing a story around it or different recordings around it. There are also some jazz records and singer-songwriter records from Ella Fitzgerald or John Fahey, really great records, but some funny [ones] as well, storybook records about Santa Claus saving Martians or there’s a ‘Monster Mash’ version called the ‘Christmas Mash.’ That is worth having!”

Scoring the Santa Clones

"Santa Clones it’s a Portland popup art installation by Chris Willis of 420 some odd little plastic Santas. They are occupying a space which is at this mystery location and I’ve curated a playlist to go through the entire run of the installation. And when the music plays, it will be the soundtrack of the past that includes vintage radio recordings and over 100 songs that are about Santa Claus. We also check in throughout with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, that used to curate a radio special tracking where Santa was in the world, and so we get to hear a little bit of that in this kind of impressionistic art installation."

Nostalgia & Christmas songs of the past

“There are two songs in particular this season that I’ve been really drawn to for personal, emotional reasons. The one that I find really moving this year. is from the Duluth, Minnesota-based band Low. They had a Christmas record called ‘Low Christmas’ and it largely is a moody, emotional Christmas album. The singer Mimi Parker died in 2022, so hearing her now is hearing this voice from the past — in lots of ways — and brings emotion to this song called ‘Just Like Christmas,’ where she’s driving with her bandmates [including] her husband and he comments that because it’s snowing in Sweden, it’s just like Christmas and she says basically he was wrong. But then they get to Oslo and they find a small hostel, almost like they find a little inn, right? The beds are small, but they felt young and that was just like Christmas.

Another one that resonates in the same way, but maybe a slightly more fun way because it’s such a pop, well-known song is ‘Last Christmas.’ George Michael wanted to write a Christmas song that was gonna be successful and popular, but also a Christmas number one. He died having accomplished two of those three things. He wrote a song that was popular and is eternal, but was not a Christmas number one until last Christmas when it topped the charts in the UK for the first time, 39 years later.

And I think that really ends the question of like, is it a good song? There are haters to every song, haters of Christmas songs for sure, but I think Last Christmas really captures something about Christmas, because it is the mix of regret, but also hope for the future."