Songs to Get Through the Winter Holidays
In today’s newsletter, a playlist for the season. Plus:
Photograph by Kirk West / Getty
Amanda Petrusich
Staff writer
The winter holidays can be joyous, exuberant, warming. But if the season’s relentless jubilance has left you a little raw and crabby, if you are overdue for a good sob-and-wallow, if you are jonesing for a long walk in the spindly cold, if you are feeling newly devastated and oppressed by what Emily Dickinson once called the “certain Slant of light” that hits on winter afternoons, allow me to offer a short playlist of songs that forego the mandatory cheer in favor of a darker, moodier vibe. In my opinion, December is a terrific time to turn up the collar of your wool coat and cultivate an air of gloomy complexity. Enjoy!
- “If We Make It Through December,” Merle Haggard
- “Winter Lady,” Leonard Cohen
- “Winter Is Blue,” Vashti Bunyan
- “Blood Bank,” Bon Iver
- “Fuck, I Hate the Cold,” Cowboy Junkies
- “December Day,” Willie Nelson
- “Out in the Cold Again,” Sam Cooke
- “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” Nina Simone
- “Flowers in December,” Mazzy Star
- “I’m Not My Season,” Fleet Foxes
Plus: Read Amanda Petrusich on the Best Albums of 2024 »
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P.S. Richard Penniman, known by his stage name Little Richard, was born on this day in 1932. Writing about what the trailblazing, incomparable rock-and-roll singer was denied, and what he deserved and demanded for himself, Hanif Abdurraqib notes, “To remind people of all you’re capable of, and all you’ve done, may not stop you from being erased, but it might at least hang some shame around the necks of those doing the erasing.” 🔊
Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.
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