Phoebe Bridgers Shares New Christmas Cover Featuring Jackson Browne

Los Angeles singer/songwriter Phoebe Bridgers has unveiled a stirring cover of Omaha country rock band McCarthy Trenching’s straightforwardly-named “Christmas Song.” The holiday tune features vocals from Jackson Browne as well as some festive sleigh bells. The song originally appeared on McCarthy Trentching’s 2008 record Calamity Drenching. Bridgers explained the origin of the cover in a lengthy statement.

“McCarthy Trenching is singer-songwriter Dan McCarthy’s band. We played a show together in Omaha this last year. They named the band after the trenching company owned by Dan’s uncle so they could sell those t-shirts instead of having to make their own. The first time I heard this song it hit me like a ton of bricks. A lot of McCarthy Trenching songs do that. It’s not that often that I hear a Christmas song that doesn’t make me want to quit music. I played a show in L.A. around the holidays last year where I covered it for the first time. Jackson Browne was there, and he came up to me after the show to tell me how much he loved the song. A couple days later, Dan got a Bandcamp notification on his desktop computer that someone paid 50 bucks for his record and wrote a nice note and signed it Jackson Browne. He thought someone was fucking with him. So when I decided to record a version of the song, I knew who I wanted to sing on it. Plus, I have wanted to make music with Jackson as long as I’ve wanted to make music.”

This isn’t Bridgers’ first foray into Christmas music. Last year, she covered the holiday classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Bridgers released her debut solo album, Stranger in the Alps, last year and followed it up with a collaboration with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus called boygenius, who released an EP a few weeks ago. Listen to Bridgers and Browne’s take on “Christmas Song” and her KEXP in-studio below.