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Amanda Shires wants out 'For Christmas'

Amanda Shires, performing during the Americana Awards at Ryman Auditorium on Sept. 22, 2021 in Nashville.
Terry Wyatt
/
Getty Images for Americana Music
Amanda Shires, performing during the Americana Awards at Ryman Auditorium on Sept. 22, 2021 in Nashville.

Amanda Shires' new album, For Christmas, makes it clear: she'd rather not be home for Christmas at all. "I think it would be a big lie or a sham to just walk through this Christmas stuff and think that everything's perfect," the Nashville-based fiddler, songwriter and singer tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep.

Especially the second Christmas of the pandemic. "This last year has been a different kind of hard, for sure." While her Christmas album is bleaker than the average holly-and-poinsettia fare – Shires' interpretation of "Silent Night" in particular – Shires finds hope settling near the horizon.


"Just goes to show there are happy times coming," she says. "When you get the bleak you get the opposite, too."

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Steve Inskeep is a host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.