Merry Christmas Darling

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My cover of The Carpenters' beautiful Christmas song, Merry Christmas Darling. Karen Carpenter has always been one of my favorite singers. I learned an enormous amount about singing by listening to her decades ago, and I'm taking my cues from her as I sing this song. I love Richard Carpenter's musically rich song — full of wonderful key and chord changes — and instrumentally arranged in a classical style with lush harmonies.

A small change in the lyrics. I've now done enough covers of classic or well-known songs to be able to make a curious observation: many of them have one line or phrase that is "sub par" compared to the excellence of the rest of the song. It's almost as though the lyricist's creative well just ran dry in that one spot. As a songwriter, I immediately notice a weak spot like that, where the words look like they're forced or just filler words or the only words the lyricist could think of. Merry Christmas Darling has one such weak spot:

But every day's a holiday
When I'm near to you

No one says "when I'm near to you"! It's incredibly stilted language.

Fortunately, there's a really easy fix:

But every day's a holiday
When I'm here with you

so that's what I sing instead.