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A New Thought For Christmas | 
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| Artist: Melissa Etheridge
Label: Island
Category: Music
List Price: $13.98
Buy New: $8.75
You Save: $5.23 (37%)
New (35) Used (9) from $7.95
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 420
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.3
UPC: 602517746763
EAN: 0602517746763
ASIN: B001E2JN88
Release Date: September 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item. CD, DVD, Book, VHS more than 400 000 titles to choose from. ALL days Low Price !
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| Tracks:
| • | Blue Christmas | | • | Glorious | | • | Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) | | • | Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas | | • | Ring The Bells | | • | Merry Christmas Baby | | • | Christmas In America | | • | Light A Light | | • | It's Christmas Time | | • | O Night Divine |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
What if someone made a Christmas album for everybody else? That's exactly what Melissa Etheridge has done. Working alongside her producer David Cole, Melissa's songs celebrate a spiritual time of year where people can rejoice in their traditional, or non-traditional ways, and celebrate a winter solstice filled with love and peace. This ten song album has newly composed songs such as "Ring The Bells," "Light A Light," and "It's Christmas Time" interspersed with traditional holiday standards such as "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and "Blue Christmas." This album begs the question, "If we're all talking about peace on earth, what if we all concentrated on peace on earth and made it happen?" Melissa Etheridge has been a core Island Records artist since the release of her critically-acclaimed eponymous debut, which led to an invitation to sing on the 1989 Grammy Awards broadcast. For several years, Melissa's popularity built around such memorable songs as "Bring Me Some Water" (from her debut), "No Souvenirs" (from 1989's Brave And Crazy) and "Ain't It Heavy" (from 1992's Never Enough), for which she won her first Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal. Melissa hit her commercial and artistic stride with her fourth album, 1993's Yes I Am, featuring the massive hits "I'm the Only One" and "Come to My Window," a searing song of longing that brought her second Best Female Rock Grammy. The album went six times platinum and spent more than two and a half years on the album chart. In 1995, she issued her highest charting album, Your Little Secret (#6 on the Billboard Top 200), which included the hit single, "I Want to Come Over." Her astounding success led Melissa to receive the Songwriter of the Year honor at the ASCAP Pop Awards in 1996. Melissa continued to write, record, and tour throughout the '90s and into the new millennium. In 2006, she was approached by Al Gore to write a song for his documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth. The result was "I Need To Wake Up" and in February 2007, she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Melissa's Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled was repackaged to include the OSCAR winning song. In April 2007, Melissa Etheridge received the distinguished ASCAP Founders Award honoring the anthemic power, compassion, and generosity of spirit of her music, and her enduring status as one of the greatest all-time female rock icons. In September 2007, she released The Awakening, which was selected by Rolling Stone Magazine as #20 on its Top 50 albums of 2007.
Album Description
Multi-platinum, Oscar and two-time Grammy Award winning Island Records artist Melissa Etheridge presents her 2008 Holiday album, New Thought For Christmas. The album art of a frosted winter window with the peace symbol on the pane says it all. Within the ten album tracks is some classic and traditional songs as well as the song 'Christmas In America'.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Great covers, originals apparently for faithful followers January 1, 2009
Michael J. Melton (Pulaski, Wi United States)
I am not a big Etheridge fan, I just picked this up a week or so ago because I noticed this when looking for a bluesy Christmas album. I love her covers of some of the classics like "Blue Christmas" and the guitar work is sweet, but sorry the originals don't seem memorable to me. They are not bad, but seem sort of bland to me. I think one problem (for me at least) was the attempt to mine a deep spiritual meaning from Christmas with only a veiled nod of disdain to traditional Christian spirituality. You can have a lot of fun with a totally secular recording if you don't like Christianity and I own and enjoy many recordings in that vein, but those recordings focus on tradition, fun, romance, and family. Christmas already has a rich spiritual context, one that is as complex and multifaceted as anyone could imagine, and if you don't go for that, it has be pretty good to avoid losing in comparison. Sorry, but reflecting on farmer's almanac facts like the relative length of days and nights is not a message that will bring hope to brighten the lives of those who are oppressed. The traditional Christmas tree defeats the trendy Festivus pole for me. So this is a new thought for Christmas, an original one for sure, just not a great one.
 A New Voice For Christmas December 31, 2008
Kim Rammelkamp (New Jersey United States)
It is so great to hear some NEW Christmas tunes...especially when they are sung so passionately by the great Melissa Etheridge. I really enjoyed her versions of some of the classics, as well as her original songs. She's written some great lyrics and the message is clear...let's remember that Christmas is a time for peace. Loved this one!
Step Out from the Dark December 27, 2008
Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States)
Melissa Etheridge's Christmas record is perfectly conceived. She combines mostly new originals with a few classic songs and balances the softer sounds with her trademark rock. The blues guitar on "Blue Christmas" builds to a thundering storm for those who are sad for the holidays. My favorite track is "Glorious" with Paul Trudeau's keyboards tinkling joyfully as Melissa's lovely vocals caress the lyrics gently, "I have heard the angels sweetly singing o'er the plains & I heard the mountain echoing their sweet refrain." Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich & Phil Spector's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" rocks thunderously with Melissa pulling out all the stops on this rock & roll Christmas song, "They're singing deck the halls, but it's not like Christmas at all; I remember when you were here & all the fun we had last year." I thought I would never like another version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" more than the one James Taylor did on James Taylor At Christmas. However, whereas James has a sadness that makes you feel he could break into tears, Etheridge draws strength from holiday joys with that incredible lead guitar milking the blues from the track. What a delight! The six-minute "Ring the Bells" may be the perfect Christmas song as the Obama era starts in America, "We've all been called to wake from sleep, to feel our power, to create the dream, to step out from the dark, past our father's fear." The lovely hopeful song speaks to the best of us. "Merry Christmas Baby" is an amorous Christmas love song with Etheridge's smoking guitar weeping the feel-good blues. "Christmas in America" hinges on a girl missing her loved one that veils a peace message, "What happened to peace on earth? All the goodwill toward men? Ah, come on all ye faithful, it's time to think again." It's a powerful track with Etheridge's vocals filled with equal parts anger and longing. "Light a Light" melds a beautiful melody with a hopeful lyric and Melissa's earth-mother vocals, "Heaven is inside, it's all around, not just above; Choose only love." "It's Christmas Time" rocks joyfully, "What if we all stopped believing the lie that happiness comes from a store." As on many of the tracks here, Melissa references other well-known Christmas carols as a departure point taking "O Holy Night" to create the CD closer "O Night Divine." "A New Thought for Christmas" is a lovely holiday album that rocks & bleeds, loves & hopes. It's an excellent effort from this master musician. Bravo!
How about "A New CLASSIC For Christmas!" December 26, 2008
A Music Fan (NY/NJ Metro Area)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having close to 200 Christmas CDs of every genre, after listening to these incredible songs and arrangements by Melissa and her band, this is without a doubt one of my favorites, and will remain so - the rare one where every single track is superb - no easy feat for ANY artist.
Melissa has that rare gift of her vocals at times rocking out like an incredibly raw force of nature ("O Night Divine," "Merry Christmas, Baby," which sure doesn't start out the way it ends!), or sounding fragile and plaintive ("Christmas In America", okay, plaintive!) :-) strong and uplifting ("Ring The Bells"), or sultry and flirtatious, but they are ALWAYS memorable, just as each of the songs and arrangements are here.
I knew I was in for something special when I heard the first track, "Blue Christmas," but was absolutely floored upon hearing the last track, "O Night Divine." All throughout the disc, Melissa and her band are incredible, but here, at the end of a remarkable track (that could easily make the Trans-Siberian Orchestra seem like amateurs), I found myself wanting more - LOTS more!
Thanks, Melissa and band for making an outstanding, heartfelt, varied, meaningful and amazing Christmas gift of music that deserves to be in everyone's collection. So, if you're reading this, please take my advice and buy this CD. It'll be one of the BEST presents you can give yourself, your friends or that special someone this year. (Not to mention one of your favorites, too!) :-)
Wonderful music December 21, 2008
Mark Jurentkuff (Cape Cod, MA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fans of Melissa will love this CD. Her voice is just amazing and the songs she has chosen for this CD are just perfect for her style.
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