Yesterday, we got Christian Lee Hutson‘s mournful rendition of “Silent Night” to give us a melancholy introduction to the holiday season. Now, we have none other than Phoebe Bridgers to make us emotional with a cover of The Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine,” a similarly pained holiday soundtrack.
She opens the song with the immediately visceral lines, “I had nothing to say on Christmas day / When you threw all your clothes in the snow / When you burnt your hair, and you knocked over chairs / I just tried to stay out of your way.” She’s known for releasing heartbreaking holiday songs, including “If We Make It Through December,” “Day After Tomorrow,” and more. Proceeds from “So Much Wine” will go to the Los Angeles LGBT Center. It also features vocals from her rumored fiance Paul Mescal, Marshall Vore, Harrison Whitford, and Sebastian Steinberg, plus vocals, violin, and whistling from Andrew Bird.
Though this ballad is dejected, the singer-songwriter opened up earlier this year about trying to write happy songs. “I’m striving to do more stuff like that. I think it’s more challenging to sound smart and write well about happiness than it is about sadness,” she said. “In the interest of not seeming trite, I lean toward darker subject matter, just out of comfort. And I think a challenge to myself, now, is being articulate about things that are good [laughs].”
Listen to her cover above.