Ask anyone for a list of summer songs and they'll have no trouble rattling off tune after tune, but then it has always been the most glamorous of the seasons. Winter, on the other hand, has always been a harder sell. Jules Gray solves that one with this latest collection of classics.
Ask anyone for a list of summer songs and they'll have no trouble rattling off tune after tune, but then it has always been the most glamorous of the seasons. Winter, on the other hand, has always been a harder sell. It's cold, there's considerably less daylight, and there's a fair amount of bleakness that we associate with this time of year. Even Mother Nature attests to this - the trees are bare, and many animals shun it entirely and have a bloody long nap. The light in this darkness for many is Christmas (see also: Hanukkah; Pancha Ganapati; Yule et al, according to your culture and/or faith) and there is certainly no shortage of Christmas music and songs both religious and secular, so much so that any notion of winter songs has been all but eclipsed by Christmas songs. I thought it might be interesting to widen the scope and dig a little deeper, to find some music that gives us a broader view of winter.
1. The Mamas and The Papas – California Dreamin' (from If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears)
We're so used to associating both The Mamas and The Papas and California with sunshine and the swinging sixties, that it can almost come as a surprise to realise that this good-time singalong is set in deepest winter, but it's there right from the very first line: “All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/I've been for a walk on a winter's day”, because, tellingly, the song's narrator is not in fact in California at all, but merely dreaming of being there.
2. Simon & Garfunkel – I Am a Rock (from Sounds of Silence)
Of course, the obvious S&G song to choose would be A Hazy Shade of Winter, either the original, or The Bangles' cover, but I've never much cared for it. I'm not sure that Paul Simon's gifts were best suited to danceable beat pop. I Am a Rock, on the other hand, is petulant teenage melancholic genius. “A winter's day in a deep and dark December/I am alone.”
3. The Kinks – End of the Season (from Something Else by The Kinks)
Another portrait from Ray Davies' endless gallery of character sketches. He did a great line in beleaguered, dubious public school types. “Back in the scrum on a wet afternoon/Down in the mud dreaming of flowers in June.”
4. Leonard Cohen – Winter Lady (from The Songs of Leonard Cohen)
Some people, less charitable than myself, might describe Laughing Len's entire output as one, long winter. For me, he remains perhaps the greatest poet whoever worked in song. “Well I lived with a child of snow when I was a soldier/And I fought every man for her until the nights grew colder.”
5. The Doors – Wintertime Love (from Waiting for the Sun)
When The Doors were this light and poppy, you can bet your leather trousers that it was the work of Robby Krieger rather than Jim Morrison. It's become fashionable to knock The Doors of late, but to my mind they broke lots of new ground and made a great sound. This whimsical waltz perhaps wouldn't win them many new converts, but I like it, so there.
6. The Beach Boys – Time to Get Alone (from 20/20)
Talk about a band that you would never associate with winter, The Beach Boys being kings of sun, sea, and surf. Yet they also made a Christmas album, and here, when hardly anyone was still listening, they gave us this paean to the joys of tobogganing with your best gal. It's another waltz. I'm a sucker for songs in ¾ time. And listen to that cavernous echo when they sing “deep and wide” - a real wow moment .
7. Grateful Dead – Dire Wolf (from Workingman's Dead)
Yet more Californians singing about bleak winterscapes. This scenario is so fraught with the promise of death that its fangs are dripping with blood. Yet it's all set to the most jaunty of country melodies. It's also proof that the Dead weren't just about long jams and even longer strange trips, they could also sing and write tunes you could whistle when they wanted to.
8. Fotheringay – Winter Winds (from Fotheringay)
The peerless Sandy Denny here, fronting the band she left Fairport Convention to form.
9. Bob Dylan – Winterlude (from New Morning)
What is it about winter and waltzes? Recorded during a period when Bob couldn't quite decide if he could be bothered trying very hard any more. “Winterlude, it's makin' me lazy” indeed, yet this dude still considers it to be undeniably charming.
10. Lindisfarne – Winter Song (from Nicely Out of Tune)
Lindisfarne have not received their due reverence, largely because there's a general perception of them being a Geordie party band. I don't suppose that doing a remake of Fog on the Tyne with Gazza helped. Yet they had, in Alan Hull, a great writer, capable of devastatingly brilliant songs. Even better than Winter Song is January Song, which is less explicitly seasonal, but is evidence of the kind of greatness of which I speak. I recommend that you seek it out. Winter Song has recently been covered by Sam Fender.
11. Joni Mitchell – Urge for Going (b-side, later compiled on Hits)
Oh yes, I'm pulling out all the big guns here. This was one of the songs that Joni wrote before she got a record deal. Her 1966 reading of the song is being released any time now. This is a later version, recorded during the Blue sessions. It was originally intended for that album, but at the eleventh hour Joni substituted it with a newer song, and Urge for Going was thus only issued as a single b-side. David Crosby and Graham Nash have also recorded a terrific cover version. “When the sun turns traitor cold/And all the trees are shivering in a naked row” - that's just astoundingly good poetry.
12. The Rolling Stones – Winter (from Goats Head Soup)
The Stones had sung about snow before, but rumours persist that they just may have been referring to Colombian marching powder. As if.
13. Neil Young – Winterlong (outtake, later compiled on Decade)
Winterlong had been a concert staple for Neil Young and Crazy Horse during their 1970 concerts, but it was set aside when Neil disbanded the group. Following the death of Crazy Horse's other guitar player, Danny Whitten (the man who wrote I Don't Want to Talk About It), Neil revisited the song. Passed over for both Tonight's the Night and On the Beach, it finally found a home on Neil's Decade retrospective. It was later covered by Pixies. Oh, and it's brilliant.
14. Television – Carried Away (from Adventure)
Television's Adventure is my nomination for being the most overlooked/underrated album of all time. Marquee Moon was such a class act, that just about anything was bound to suffer by comparison. This song continues the mood begun by Guiding Light on that much revered previous record. “Those rooms were freezing and always dark/But where we were never mattered.”
15. Game Theory – Regenisraen (from The Big Shot Chronicles)
From an overlooked album, to a totally overlooked band, here prompting the question; when is a Christmas song not really a Christmas song? The scene painted here is so vivid that you can almost see your breath in the chilly air. Game Theory's lynchpin Scott Miller was an unsung genius. I urge you to buy this record and all of his others too.
16. The Replacements – Skyway (from Pleased to Meet Me)
The Replacements hailed from Minneapolis, where it gets awfully cold in winter. They have a series of covered pedestrian bridges so that people can get around without being exposed to the harsh seasonal weather conditions. These are the “skyways” which Paul Westerberg is singing about in this song. He's so cold that he's even wearing his “stupid hat and gloves” to bed. For a band of hellraisers, The 'Mats could often surprise you with tender, reflective songs like this one.
17. Guided by Voices – I'm Cold (outtake, later compiled on Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft)
Guided by Voices have thus far issued four of the Suitcase series of boxed sets, each containing 100 songs from Robert Pollard's enormous archive of unreleased material. That the man averages about three album releases a year and yet still has anything left over is mind-boggling, especially when they're as good as this one. The song dates from the late 80s, when the band were only making vanity pressings of records for their own amusement. I'm Cold is a heartfelt contemplation of an unforgiving winter in the life of a working stiff with very little in the way of prospects. Pollard nails it perfectly, with just his voice and an electric guitar.
18. Galaxie 500 – Snowstorm (from On Fire)
This is the second time I've sneaked this track onto one of these playlists, but I couldn't possibly have left out such a fine song about harsh winter weather from this one. The band's slow, cool, mesmeric playing suits the subject matter to a tee. “And they've got nothing else to think of/And they're letting me go home.”
19. Screaming Trees – Winter Song (from Sweet Oblivion)
When I was first compiling this playlist, I knew I was a few songs short, so I asked around for suggestions on Twitter, and this one came up twice. Featuring a young Mark Lanegan on vocals, I only had to hear this once and it was a shoo-in.
20. Teenage Fanclub – Winter (from Songs from Northern Britain)
I was besotted by The Fannies' Bandwagonesque album. So much so, that nothing else they have done since has been able to rival it in my affections. But this one makes a decent stab.
21. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow (from No More Shall We Part)
There aren't many artists who can rival Nick Cave's consistency over the past four decades. He's the master of gothic, old testament themes of sin and (occasional) redemption.
22. Fountains of Wayne – Valley Winter Song (from Welcome Interstate Managers)
A refreshing palate cleanser. Effortlessly breezy, and proof that winter songs don't have to be sad and sombre
23. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal (from Fleet Foxes)
I was both stunned and instantly smitten when I first heard this song. Robin Pecknold's way with a melody and his band's talent for CSN-style harmonising was such an unexpected new delight when very little new music was grabbing my attention. This has deservedly become a modern day classic. Utterly beautiful.
24. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Then the Letting Go (from The Letting Go)
My friend Nettie, a Bonnie “Prince” Billy devotee, told me a story about the night she went to see him perform this album, which has winter as one of the central thematic threads. The assembled crowd were unaware that it had been snowing heavily during the concert, until the venue doors were thrown open at the end, revealing a transformed winter landscape – the perfect visualisation of the music that they had just been listening to.
25. The Decemberists – January Hymn (from The King is Dead)
The Decemberists have been another of the great discoveries of recent times for me. The King is Dead is filled with melodic delights and sees them moving away from the British folk-rock influences of their earlier records, into a more American soundscape. A band named after December singing a song about January has to be peak winter.
26. Cowboy Junkies – Fuck, I Hate the Cold (from The Wilderness)
And the prize for best song title goes to... I confess that I didn't know Cowboy Junkies were still making records, and yet this is from the fourth volume of their Nomad Series of albums, each one addressing a different season, with The Wilderness obviously concerning itself with winter.
27. Purple Mountains – Snow is Falling in Manhattan (from Purple Mountains)
David Berman was best known for his work with Silver Jews. He stopped making music for over a decade, but returned in 2019 with Purple Mountains. Alas, no sooner had the album been released than David took his own life, after years struggling with depression and substance abuse. We can be thankful that he left us one last musical gift. This is a gentle, undulating rumination on a winter snow scene, with occasional swells of voices and horns. “Songs build little rooms in time/And housed within the song's design/Is the ghost the host has left behind/To greet and sweep the guest inside.”
Winters come and go. Sometimes it feels like they'll never end, but they always do. In the meantime, light the fire, maybe have a drink of something warming, listen to these seasonally appropriate offerings, and remember that although winters can be cold and sometimes brutal, that they also contain beauty and magic, and always the promise of the spring to come.
Jules Gray, Winter 2020/21.