Michael W. Smith - Christmas

December 2, 2017 8:39 AM

In 1989, CCM artist Michael W. Smith was at the peak of his career, achieving minor mainstream success while being one of the biggest Contemporary Christian artists of the time. He released an excellent, orchestra+choir, Steamroller-influenced, rather introspective-feeling album of original holiday music titled simply Christmas. The opening track is Overture/O Come All Ye Faithful.

2) Lux Venit
3) Anthem For Christmas
4) First Snowfall
5) Christ The Messiah
6) No Eye Had Seen
7) All Is Well
8) Memoirs: A Trilogy (The Voice/Good King Wenceslaus/Hark the Herald Angels Sing) [which on the album runs directly into the next track]
9) Gloria [apologies that I couldn't find a version where they're all one track as designed]
10) Silent Night

posted by hippybear (14 comments total)

This is the perfect Christmas gift for my parents: my mother will love it, and it will drive my father insane.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:02 AM on December 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

If you're not familiar with Mannheim Steamroller, calling music "Steamroller-influenced" evokes a pretty amusing image.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:36 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

"If you're not familiar with Mannheim Steamroller, calling music "Steamroller-influenced" evokes a pretty amusing image."

If you ARE familiar with Mannheim Steamroller, calling music "Steamroller-influenced" will most likely not help the sale.

Well, not with me, at least.
posted by jonathanhughes at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm afraid that when I hear contemporary Christian, no matter how benign, I run the other way. For me it's the textbook definition of triggering. I did listen to the first thirty seconds or so of "Lux Venit." I'm gonna stick with the singing nuns of Ann Arbor, thanks much.
posted by filthy_prescriptivist at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Raised evangelical as I was, I wore this out when I was a teenager. I still have a soft spot in my heart for it; it manages to exemplify both Smith’s best talents (as an arranger of expansive sacred music) and the best parts of evangelicalism - the hope, the grace, the idea that light is coming after the darkness - without any of the worst bits (the Swiss cheese theology, the judgmentalism, the ugly history with racism/homophobia).
posted by eustacescrubb at 11:43 AM on December 2, 2017 [8 favorites]

Well, I personally have always really liked the cheesy Mannheim Steamroller Christmas tunes, and this scratches the same itch. Oh, those heady days when pop musicians were discovering synths and making weird, uncanny-valley quality noises without really understanding exactly how or why. Lots of fun. Thanks for posting!
posted by capricorn at 12:59 PM on December 2, 2017

>If you're not familiar with Mannheim Steamroller, calling music "Steamroller-influenced" evokes a pretty amusing image.


I immediately thought of the Providence Steamrollers from the Arena Football league.
posted by KazamaSmokers at 3:12 PM on December 2, 2017

It's 2017. If the words "Christmas' and "Steamroller" somehow in conjunction don't evoke a specific kind of chord changes and instrumentation surrounding holiday music, then you're more than 30 years out of touch.
posted by hippybear at 3:21 PM on December 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

Count me as a big fan of hippybear’s Xn music posts!
posted by persona au gratin at 5:02 PM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's 2017. If the words "Christmas' and "Steamroller" somehow in conjunction don't evoke a specific kind of chord changes and instrumentation surrounding holiday music, then you're more than 30 years out of touch.

The Christmas-Industrial Complex
posted by thelonius at 5:34 PM on December 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Christmas-Industrial Complex

Charlie Brown started killing that that decades earlier.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 PM on December 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

I loved MWS back in my mid to late teens, and well into my 20s, even after I had given up on Christianity. He and Amy Grant were my favorites.

I'm glad he is still actively making music.
posted by MissySedai at 10:51 PM on December 2, 2017

I loved MWS back in my mid to late teens, and well into my 20s, even after I had given up on Christianity. He and Amy Grant were my favorites.

The Amy/Michael era of the late 80s, which had Lead Me On / i 2 (eye) as a double album release and a double tour (which I saw and it was really great), and then the follow up era of Amy's Heart In Motion (moving more toward secular sensibilities) sandwiched between Michael's Go West Young Man and Change Your World, during which it was obvious that MWS was moving pretty hard in a particular direction with his message, and then more over his next albums.

But this one brief era... I'd say Amy's Unguarded and Michael's The Big Picture through Amy's House Of Love and Michael's I'll Lead You Home and a lot of the CCM that came out during that time was some of the best CCM I've encountered. Much of it is stuff I have in my iTunes library today, even if I haven't clicked on any of it in a long while.

Although I have here recently. I wonder why. Still, great music. That particular era was when that kind of music hans't crossed over into the narrow. And I still celebrate that music and how it reminds me of how I loved being part of the church.

I could build a post of just those albums from that era. It was a good time for music AND faith.
posted by hippybear at 11:15 PM on December 2, 2017

I legit still really like Lead Me On.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:33 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]