The country singers lament a Christmas season divided by distance and heartbreak
Country Christmas songs can be as saccharine as a holiday cookie. Not “Lonely on Christmas,” Brit Taylor and Mike and the Moonpies’ wonderfully melancholy new collab. “You know it’s time to make a change, when your whole family’s estranged,” Taylor and the Moonpies’ Mike Harmeier harmonize, lamenting the physical and emotional distance between a couple.
The country singers — Taylor’s from Kentucky, the Moonpies from Texas — bring the isolation to life in the song’s music video too. Taylor filmed her part remotely at a content house in Nashville, while Harmeier, in an oversized Santa jacket and a drunk-on-Christmas countenance that’s both comical and heartbreaking, posted up at the Devil’s Backbone Tavern in Fischer, Texas.
“The polarity of our vocal styles just fits the song and the mood,” Taylor said of duetting with Harmeier. Taylor produced the recording with Adam Chaffins; Jason White wrote “Lonely on Christmas.”
The song is one of handful of particularly superb country-music holiday recordings this year: Chris Canterbury’s cover of John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison,” Hailey Whitters’ version of Randy Travis’ “Meet Me Under the Mistletoe,” John Driskell Hopkins’ take on “Snow” from White Christmas, Elvie Shane’s kingly “Blue Christmas,” and Jamie Kent’s Rat Pack original “Toboggan Tumbling.”
Taylor will perform at the 2023 Railbird Festival in Kentucky next June; while Harmeier returns to the Devil’s Backbone for a one-man Christmas show on Dec. 16.