OTL 58: Bill Adler Excerpt #4 “Adler’s Christmas Favorites” Lyrics

SameOldShawn: Out of the countless Christmas songs you've encountered over the years, as a final thing, maybe leave our audience with a couple of your absolute favorites for them to look up and check out this season?

Bill Adler: One is Freddie King's version of "Christmas Tears". He was a great, great guitarist, you know, somebody Eric Clapton might have fellated in Macy's window. But he also happens to have been a superb singer and songwriter. And one of the songs he wrote was called "Christmas Tears", and it'll rip your heart out. I mean, it's on kind of a familiar theme, which is "Baby, you're not with me at Christmastime and I feel blue!" But he renders it so magnificently. So that's one. And then another that kills me is Irma Thomas, who's out of New Orleans. She did a version of "Oh, Holy Night", which is a standard, but she sings it so powerfully that the finished product is gonna tempt even a nonbeliever like me into something like faith.

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Genius Annotation

Famous Christmas music expert Bill Adler gives us his favorite seasonal tunes

Check our entire Xmas interview with Adler here

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