{"id":31872,"date":"2020-12-12T16:15:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-12T23:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=31872"},"modified":"2020-12-12T16:15:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-12T23:15:52","slug":"christmas-waltz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/christmas-waltz\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of New Christmas Music: Christmas Waltz by Marc Martel and Amy Grant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> Waltz is not the most well known of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> classics. But it is a showcase for the marvelous blend of Marc Martel and Amy Grant, who have teamed up again after doing a little <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/silver-bells\/\"><strong>Christmas together in 2019<\/strong><\/a>. Take a listen:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iptEtoTdl-I\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be the first to tell you this is not my favorite song of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a>. But when you have pros like Amy Grant and Marc Martel putting their polish on it this song grows in favor. I quite enjoyed it because of them.<\/p>\n<p><em>The <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> Waltz<\/em> is a <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> song written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for Frank Sinatra, who recorded it in 1954 as the B-side of a new recording of &#8220;White Christmas&#8221;. Maybe that is why I&#8217;ve never cared for this song. Sinatra was notorious for his dislike of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> music and this was likely a song that got under his skin. It was not his best.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this rendition sticks because the tenor of Mark Martel soars so nicely. He&#8217;s joyous and a delight to hear. His sharp highs contrast nicely with Amy Grant&#8217;s smoky lows and the result is <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> ambiance that does not get pushed too far by the orchestration. This is a song that is easy to turn into a stage show and whoever mixed it showed great restraint. The result is a dang good Christmasy feel to a tired old song.<\/p>\n<p>As is the case with a lot of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> music this one has been covered by a variety of artists, most of the failures marked by the lack of year after year <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-glimpse-of-christmas-100-years-ago\/\">radio<\/a> play. Nancy Wilson famously made a hit of it and it came out well in renditions by Harry Connick Jr and Kristin Chenoweth.<\/p>\n<p>But Marc Martel and Amy Grant get is just right as a duet. This one could be played year after year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Christmas Waltz is not the most well known of Christmas classics. But it is a showcase for the marvelous blend of Marc Martel and Amy Grant, who have teamed up again after doing a little Christmas together in 2019. Take a listen: I&#8217;ll be the first to tell you this is not my favorite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":109,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[600,758],"class_list":["post-31872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-music","category-christmas-news","tag-amy-grant","tag-marc-martel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}