pa rum pum pum pum.....

I love Christmas songs.

Well, I love some Christmas songs - like everyone else I'm pretty bored of that album of songs that has remained unchanged for about the last twenty years, at least. You know...... Slade, Wizzard, Lennon, Shakin' Stevens, Jonah Lewie, Paul McCartney.... that one. That same album is currently playing in nine out of ten shops on the British high street. When I worked at HMV, we waited until Christmas Eve before we put that album on, and we were all so sick of it that we had it off again by lunchtime and were back on the godawful dance compilations. They're not all bad songs, but they are terribly, terribly overexposed - so much so that the magic has worn off.

There are other Christmas songs that you don't hear quite so often; songs that make you feel all warm and fuzzy and ready for the festive period. Some of them even make me crave an eggnog, and I don't even really know what eggnog is. They're that good.

With this in mind, I"ve got an early Christmas present for you: it's an xmas album for you to download. I'm pretty new at these things, and I'm not 100% sure it will work, but hopefully, if you click here, you'll be able to download a zip file containing 22 songs.

I like them anyway. For reasons of me not being arrested by random record company googling, you can find the full tracklist here. (I nearly put Band Aid 20 on it, but I resisted the urge... you'll have to put up with the Darkness though).

For many of these songs, I'm heavily indebted to a collection made available a couple of years ago on Sweeping the Nation, so thanks to them for that. The rest are probably either on an old XFM compilation from a while back, or things I've picked up here and there along the way. It's good for the next 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first, so get it whilst it's fresh and let me know what you think.

I just hope it works.

My favourite ever Christmas song is either track one or track five here. What's your favourite?

(oh, and all music is made available here for non-commercial use only, right? If you like something, promise me you'll go out and buy it, okay? Good).