Talking Holidays: Listen To David Byrne’s Christmas Playlist

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne assembled a holiday playlist for NPR’s Fresh Air program. Byrne’s playlist that he describes as “something that will bring a little joy to the holidays,” features a total of 19 songs with Christmas classics and contemporary numbers by Prince, James Brown, The Pogues, Paul Simon and Neko Case among them.

No Talking Heads songs are included as the band never considered making a holiday album. “On one hand, Christmas songs are perennial … so you’re kind of you’re set for your song royalties or whatever,” Byrne told NPR. “But if it doesn’t click, you’ve just got this embarrassing thing.” However, David Byrne finally put out his own original holiday single, “Fat Man’s Comin’,” last year with proceeds donated to his Reasons To Be Cheerful nonprofit. The ode to Santa starts the playlist.

“I sometimes have a tendency to take things a little bit literally,” Byrne explained of his Christmas song. “So I looked at the whole Santa phenomena and said, well, what if I just described this exactly as what’s happening? Here’s a stranger who’s sneaking, breaking into your house, basically, leaving packages — and dressed in a rather strange outfit. I thought, what if I just write that? The arrangement is by a guy named Jherek Bischoff that I’d worked with before, and his arrangement is pretty incredible, really kind of catches the flavor of what I’m getting [at], this sort of slightly ominous description of what Santa is up to.”

David Byrne curated a mix of songs spanning multiple decades. One fairly recent holiday tune to make the cut is “Christmas Will Break Your Heart” by LCD Soundsystem. “I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s just this kind of enforced joy that we’re supposed to feel that [makes] people kind of feel like, ‘Wait a minute, you can’t tell me to be happy!'” the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer said of the complex emotions the holidays bring. “And we have James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem doing a song called ‘Christmas Will Break Your Heart,’ which in some cases is very, very true.”

Paul Simon’s “Getting Ready For Christmas Day,” The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s “Fairytale of New York,” The Staple Singers’ “Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas,” Phoebe Bridgers’ “If We Make It Through December and Run D.M.C.’s “Christmas In Hollis” are more of the songs Byrne picked for his playlist. Stream David Byrne’s Christmas Playlist below: