Joan Osborne

Joan Osborne
a.k.a. Joan Elizabeth Osborne

THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON

Joan Osborne Conjures a Soulful Mood on Christmas Means Love
Joan Osborne's roots come from soul and R&B music -- as evident on How Sweet It Is, her 2002 album of soul covers -- but she's also scored pop hits with "One of Us" and toured with the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh. Now, on Christmas Means Love, she digs deeply into seasonal songs, from gospel classics such as "Children Go Where I Send Thee" to traditional carols like "Away in a Manger" to secular tunes like the Band's "Christmas Must Be Tonight." From her Brooklyn home, with her ten-month-old daughter playing in the background, Osborne spoke to Barnes & Noble.com's Steve Klinge about what motivated her to make a Christmas record, her penchant for songs about God, and her fear of "audio whiplash."

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you decide to do a Christmas album?

Joan Osborne: The producer, Tor Hyams, approached me about doing one. I'd always thought in the back of my mind that they were a little bit corny, and when he approached me at first I was like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do that. But then I started really thinking about it and thinking, there must be a way to do this where it is really satisfying artistically. You could probably find some really great Christmas music, and I just started to look at it as a challenge and ended up doing a bunch of research and digging to find some really cool songs, and I ended up getting really excited about it.

B&N.com: You chose some songs that are very traditional and others songs that fit the gospel tradition and some songs that aren't in a sacred vein at all.

JO: Yeah, the "Christmas in New Orleans" and the "Santa Claus Baby" kind of stuff. I wanted to dig into that blues/jump blues era and get some things that were a little bit lighter, but then also pick a few things that were more traditional -- "Silent Night" and things like that -- which have been done a million times, so you have license to do it any way you want to, because everyone knows the song, and you can try something totally new. Or what we did is strip it down completely and be very bare about it, barebones.

B&N.com: I have a weakness for Christmas music. It has a built-in appeal because it can be lighthearted, silly, or serious while still seasonal and fun.

JO: I was definitely not trying to take it so seriously and make some grand artistic statement, but I did want to make it interesting, and I really wanted to bring something to the musicians that they would get excited about. We did this very, very quickly; it was kind of like an old-school production schedule where we made the entire record in like three days. So the musicians -- I wanted them to be excited by the material and be able to come up with a lot of ideas.... It was really, really fun.

B&N.com: Did you have a different approach in mind than you did on the last album of soul covers, How Sweet It Is?

JO: Well, I guess I wasn't trying to stay specifically within a soul vein, although I did draw a lot from that. In particular, the title track, "Christmas Means Love," comes from that background, but some of the stuff has more of a folk feel to it. But I think there are certain similarities. We chose the less-is-more approach on a lot of occasions and tried to just let the meaning of the song come through. That's one thing with these Christmas songs: You hear them a zillion times and they tend to lose their meaning unless you can come up with a unique way to put them across.

B&N.com: What are some of your favorite Christmas records?

JO: I don't know if I can even say a title for it, but there was a compilation Christmas record that my parents had when I was growing up, and it had Peggy Lee singing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," and that's where I first heard "Children Go Where I Send Thee." It had Dean Martin singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" -- it was just this very '50s, cool pop-singer Christmas record, with a couple of more traditional and gospel things thrown in. So that was always a favorite. I was fascinated by Peggy Lee at that point; I just loved her. And then my mom had this Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians chorale Christmas album that she would play to death. [Emmylou Harris's] Light in the Stable is a fantastic record, and of course the Elvis Christmas records are great. I used to sing English madrigal music when I was in junior high school, and I still have some recordings of that, like the Anonymous 4: It's not necessarily Christmas music, but a lot of their music you could put on at Christmastime, and it has that sense of being old English, beautiful, what nuns would be singing in the nunnery up on the mountain in the Middle Ages, and it's very Christmas-y in that way.

B&N.com: You've sung songs about saints and God before. Does this album fit a pattern now?

JO: [laughs heartily]

B&N.com: Why do you laugh?

JO: Oh, I don't know. I guess it does seem like I was trying to do that, but I don't really have much of an overarching design of what I'm doing with my work. I just sort of gravitate to whatever's interesting me at the moment. I think music has a very spiritual power; that's what it brings out in me. So, maybe that's why I keep going back to those images and those kind of songs, but I don't have that sort of idea about my career...it's much more random.

B&N.com: You combine a lot of different styles on the album, but it's still coherent. You can go from "Angels We Have Heard On High" to "What Do Bad Girls Get?" and it's not a jarring transition.

JO: Oh, that's good. That's the one thing I was worried about: giving people sort of audio whiplash or something, so I'm glad you feel that way.... It was really fun to do. I really like what it turned out to be. I know I'm going to be listening to it at Christmas, and I never listen to my own records. [laughs]

November 2005