There is something I need to tell you.
I have been dropping hints for a couple of weeks now and I think it is time to be a little more specific, not fully specific, not yet, but a little more specific, because I am genuinely excited and I am not very good at keeping things I am excited about entirely to myself for very long.
Something is coming this winter.
I started working on it in the early mornings while Give Me Fall was still being written, because my brain does not really know how to work on one thing at a time and apparently fall and winter were both wanting to be written simultaneously. What started as a small idea grew into something I did not expect, something with its own world and its own sonic identity and its own very specific emotional territory that is different from anything I have made before.
Here is what I can tell you. It is rooted in winter. It is rooted in tradition and the old stories that surround this season, the folklore and the legends and the ways that different cultures have made meaning out of the darkest, coldest, most beautiful time of year. It has an Irish and Celtic heart to it, which is something that has been living in me for a long time and finally found the right project to come home to. And it is, I think, the most atmospheric and transportive music I have ever made.
I am calling it A Folklore Christmas.
That is the name. I am not ready to share the full track list or all the details yet, but I wanted to give you the name because it feels like the right time and because I think it tells you exactly what kind of experience this is going to be. Not a traditional Christmas album in the conventional sense. Something older and wilder and more rooted than that. Something that sounds like candlelight and snow and ancient stories told around a fire that has been burning for centuries.
I have been making music for years now and this project feels like one of the most personally meaningful things I have ever worked on. Right alongside Give Me Fall, which remains my love letter to autumn and which I hope you are listening to on repeat as the season settles in around you. Those two albums, one about the warmth and color of fall and one about the deep winter magic that comes after, feel like companion pieces to me. Like two chapters of the same story.
If you want to be the very first to hear when I can share more about A Folklore Christmas, please get on my email list here. That is where announcements happen first, before social media, before blog posts, before anywhere else. I take my email list seriously and I want the people on it to always feel like they are on the inside.
You can also follow me on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora so that when A Folklore Christmas releases it shows up for you automatically. That follow is the single most helpful thing you can do for an independent artist and it takes three seconds.
Come hang out with me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube where I will be sharing more about this project as we get closer to the season.
Tell me in the comments: what does the phrase A Folklore Christmas make you feel? What do you hope it sounds like? I am curious to know what that title conjures for you.
More soon. I promise.
Warmly, Melanie Grace