How The Grinch Stole Christmas is probably my all-time favorite animated Christmas story. All you Charlie Brown lovers out there can debate me over it, but that’s me, and I’m sticking to it. (Although, who doesn’t love the Charlie Brown Christmas special(s), amiright?) I get a kick out of seeing how creative some people get in incorporating The Grinch into their Christmas decorations. Someone in my neighborhood has a wood cutout of Grinch on his front lawn, and the vintage multi-colored string lights adorning his gutters come down off the roof into The Grinch’s hands, making it appear as though that sneaky little rotter’s hard at work trying to ruin Christmas for everyone again. It made me smile on my walk the other day.

In a rare turn of events, I went a little bit against my usual rule of “if it Ian’t broke, don’t fix it” with Dr. Seuss’ most lovable villain’s theme song, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." I’ve always thought the tune begged for a high rock voice version, simply for the sake of contrary-ness. And the decision was kinda made for me, as my vocal cords obviously have no way of doing justice to the deep bass of the iconic original, sung by Thurl Ravenscroft. So I went into this recording feeling extra free to experiment with producer Greg Collins, and the fantastic players he assembled for it. You deep-cut Queen fans out there might be thinking to yourself “I wonder if he was taking a lead from Freddie Mercury’s performance on ‘Death On Two Legs.’” Well, you would not be wrong.

My new Christmas album, “The Christmas Collection, Vol. II” is now available at MarcMartelMusic.com

1. Zat You Santa Claus? (feat. Jared James Nichols)
2. It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
3. What Christmas Means To Me
4. The Christmas Waltz with Amy Grant
5. Light Of The World
6. Labor Of Love
7. Welcome To Our World with Leigh Nash
8. White Christmas
9. Last Christmas with Arnel Pineda
10. Blue Christmas (feat. Joe Bonamassa)
11. Silver Bells (Acoustic Version) with Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith
12. The Grinch
13. Run Run Rudolph (feat. Reese Wynans)
14. Thank God It’s Christmas
15. What Are You Doing New Years Eve?
16. I’ll Be Home For Christmas
17. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
18. I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day