To celebrate “the most wonderful time of the year,” Atwood Magazine’s Mistletones features fresh holiday/wintertime tracks and exciting covers of beloved classics. December has a knack for bringing out some of the most poignant, tender, and celebratory music, and we want to highlight that excitement by showcasing new and alternative holiday greats! Spice up your holiday season with songs you can listen to now and cherish in the years to come.
Will Knox’s beautifully melancholy “Christmas Song” ft. néomí aches with nostalgia, longing, and a heavy heart as he rings in the holidays far from hearth and home.
Stream: “Christmas Song” – Will Knox, néomí
I‘m a sucker for a melancholy Christmas tune.
From The Staves’ “Home Alone, Too” and Oh Wonder’s “This Christmas” to The Marías’ “We’re The Lucky Ones,” Ingrid Andress’ “Christmas Always Finds Me,” Josie Dunne’s “Cold in December” – and every single one of Phoebe Bridgers’ Yuletide covers – there’s nothing like a brooding serenade to get you feeling all cozy, warm, and connected to something bigger than yourself. Maybe it’s because I didn’t celebrate the holiday as a child, that the sadder songs hit so much deeper – or maybe it’s because those songs inevitably feel like a gut-punch from an aching heart.
Most happy, upbeat Christmas songs are about celebrating the holidays together with your loved ones, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that the more somber, downtempo tunes are about missing your loved ones around this time of year – spending the holidays apart and away from family, reminiscing on joys from the past that are absent in the present. This is certainly the case for most of those songs referenced above, and it holds especially true for Will Knox’s brand new “Christmas Song.” An achingly intimate and vulnerable eruption of nostalgia and longing, “Christmas Song” ft. néomí aches with a heavy heart as Knox rings in the holidays alone, far from hearth and home.
Christmas Eve in Lisbon
Far from all the drama
Following the stars above Alfama
To my angel in his cradle
My symbol of salvation
Still too you young to need an explanation
I know the time will come but..
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering Will Knox’s “Christmas Song,” a beautifully melancholic indie folk reverie. The Netherlands-based British singer/songwriter tapped Rotterdam-based folk-pop artist néomí (Neomi Speelman) to join him in a wistful journey as he recounts the pain of observing the “most wonderful time of year” away from his loved ones – depriving himself, and his one-year-old son, of the holiday spirit.
As he sings in the song’s poignant, confessional chorus:
Talking only made it worse
History proves it hurts
Best case is you deny it
Nowadays I stay quiet
Things that I wish I’d said
Still got a million left
Christmases I’m reminded
This kind of love leaves me blinded
“I never thought I’d write a Christmas song,” Knox tells Atwood Magazine. “I always thought they had to be a bit cheesy and they made me feel uncomfortable to write. But to my surprise I found myself recording ‘Christmas Song’ earlier this year at Ian Grimble’s studio in London, after going through a difficult Christmas period.”
“I moved abroad when I was 18, and Christmas has always represented a time when I could come back and see all my family, but last year for various reasons this wasn’t possible. I have a son now, who was only 1 year old when I wrote this song. I don’t think he noticed anything was wrong, but I still felt guilty I couldn’t give him the Christmas I had planned for him.”
“I explained my story to néomí, one of my favourite new artists that I have been writing and producing records with recently, and she helped pull this song out of me. We started recording the demo in my studio and I loved how her vocals felt stacked in the chorus, as if it was a choir in the back of a church at Christmas. Fortunately néomí was happy to feature and keep her vocals on the song.”
The kind without conditions
The kind that needs no reason
The kind that when you question only deepens
It’s the kind that’s never painless
The kind that’s not unfeeling
The difference is the reason we’re not speaking
I know the time will come but
Talking only made it worse
History proves it hurts
Best case is you deny it
Nowadays I stay quiet
Things that I wish I’d said
Still got a million left
Christmases I’m reminded
This kind of love leaves me blinded
For all those who are going to be far from their own loved ones this holiday season, may this song be a reminder that you are not alone.
The holidays are a time for togetherness, but we don’t always get to enjoy that luxury. Will Knox joins the cavalcade of artists whose soul-stirring holiday serenades fill our hearts with warmth, nostalgia, and a special kind of sadness that we feel deep in our bones. Stream his and néomí’s “Christmas Song” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and wherever you find yourself this time of year, we wish you a very merry Christmas and happy holidays filled with love from both near and far.
The bells, the bells
For those that talk to god
The moon, the moon
The silent night for us
Talking only made it worse
History proves it hurts
Best case is you deny it
Nowadays I stay quiet
Things that I wish I’d said
Still got a million left
Christmases I’m reminded
This kind of love leaves me blinded
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:: stream/purchase Christmas Song here ::
:: connect with Will Knox here ::
:: connect with néomí here ::
Stream: “Christmas Song” – Will Knox, néomí
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