{"id":1609,"date":"2017-12-22T08:58:57","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T08:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2017-12-19T10:23:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T10:23:21","slug":"song-of-the-week-christmas-swapping-by-mary-evans-and-luke-bateman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=1609","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Christmas Swapping&#8221; by Mary Evans and Luke Bateman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Christmas Swapping&#8221; by Mary Evans and Luke Bateman:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/82240518?portrait=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The music for this song was written by Luke Bateman, who is the brother of a friend of mine, and the lyrics are by Mary Evans (I&#8217;m not sure who the singers are). I first heard it when I went to a concert\/competition put on by the <a href=\"http:\/\/iristheatre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Iris Theatre<\/a>. For a few years now they&#8217;ve been running a Christmas song competition, in which the audience votes for a winner. This year the songs were all past winners, so it was a kind of champions league of Christmas showtunes. &#8220;Christmas Shopping&#8221; won back in 2013 (Luke and Mary won another year as well with a different song, &#8220;Christmas Table&#8221;), though it didn&#8217;t win this year&#8217;s title.<\/p>\n<p>The song has been stuck in my head on and off since 1 December. It&#8217;s got a great melody. It also has endlessly (or anyway, four minutes of) inventive lyrics. It&#8217;s no mean feat to write lyrics that tell a story while also punning and creating rhymes that don&#8217;t force themselves on the listener, within rhythms that also work. In &#8220;Christmas Swapping&#8221; the lyrics do all of that, and make it seem effortless. The matching of melody, rhythm, and words make me lean forward to catch every moment; it&#8217;s a song that demands attention, then repays it tenfold. It takes a serious amount of work to create a song that doesn&#8217;t seem to take itself too seriously.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Christmas%20Swapping%22%20by%20Mary%20Evans%20and%20Luke%20Bateman\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Christmas Swapping&#8221; by Mary Evans and Luke Bateman: The music for this song was written by Luke Bateman, who is the brother of a friend of mine, and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Christmas%20Swapping%22%20by%20Mary%20Evans%20and%20Luke%20Bateman\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1612,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}