Seeing all the Christmas lights go up at my neighbors’ houses the last few days means Christmas music will soon saturate people’s ears with old carols and that Mariah Carey song. Maybe it’s time to add a new tune to the holiday canon, and singer-songwriter Lydia Salnikova has once again stepped up to the plate to give us one.
It’s been a minute since we’ve made mention of her but longtime readers of this space might remember our admiration for this Grammy-nominated Nashville-based Russian import. Salnikova didn’t exist in the 70s but she perfectly captures the soulful, well-crafted soft rock of that decade, bringing to mind Carole King, Carly Simon or Janice Ian.
Christmas is a joyful time of the year but there’s melancholy running through her new holiday treat “Christmas Means a Different Thing This Year.” The narrator takes in all that joyfulness on the outside while inside there’s “a solitude inside a busy crowd/a lonely voice when life gets loud.” The bittersweet lyrics is perfectly matched by the flow and feel of the song.
Salnikova puts a lot of her diverse talents into “Christmas Means a Different Thing This Year:” the timeless, effortless poetry, a bridge that crests with a dramatic stair-step ascending key, and her heartfelt voice that places both power and vulnerability at the right spots. It’s all enhanced by a classical arrangement of essentially just her piano and a little bit of organ, backed by a string arrangement.
You can now stream Lydia Salnikova’s “Christmas Means a Different Thing This Year” on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon. Visit Lydia Salnikova’s website here.
- Lydia Salnikova, “Christmas Means a Different Thing This Year” (2024): One Track Mind - November 19, 2024
- Darius Jones – ‘Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)’ - November 15, 2024
- Rich Halley 4 – ‘Dusk And Dawn’ (2024) - November 13, 2024
