Brett Eldredge On Being ‘Mr. Christmas,’ Getting Kelly Clarkson’s Attention
Brett Eldredge has the country music title “Mr. Christmas.” He feels so good about the title he named his 2021 Christmas album Mr. Christmas. His first Christmas album, Glow, in 2016, got rave reviews and forever cemented him as “Mr. Christmas.” As an annual Christmas-time tradition, Brett’s “Glow LIVE” has been rolling with back-to-back shows in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. Eldredge began the tour in Nashville with two sellout shows at Nashville Ryman Auditorium a few weeks back.
Brett recently chatted with Apple and shared what inspired him to do his first-holiday album in 2016, “I grew up being the kid that would crank up Christmas music at 7:00 AM when everybody else is asleep, waking everybody up with Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole like, ‘it’s time to do this thing.’ I would be the guy that would listen really early, decorate the tree with the family, kind of all the classic Christmas things. I just loved every part of it. Where some of my friends gave me crap or made fun of me for it, I was like, ‘I’m all Christmas.'”
He added, “I’ve just always loved it. It just reminds me of being a kid as an adult. And when I was a kid, I just felt the magic. And so yeah, I got to Nashville, did what I did, and then my career started to take off, and I had that going for a while, and then I was like, ‘Man, a huge part of who I am is this big band music.’ And I was talking to John Esposito at the record label, and he loves big band music too. And he’s like, ‘If we do this, I want to make it exactly how I love big band music.’ This is a big part of who I am is this big band music. Full on, straight at it. Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, all these people that I loved their Christmas music and just their music period growing up.”
His Christmas music is so prevalent in all genres of music that it got the attention of another singer who loves Christmas: Kelly Clarkson.
Brett recalled when he first saw Kelly and experienced her music saying, “I remember seeing her do the tour after she had won [American Idol], and just thinking how incredible and captivating her voice was, and I was in high school, and I’ve just always loved just the person that she is and everything. And so two years ago, or whatever it was, she reached out and said, ‘I’d love for you to be a part of this song ‘Under the Mistletoe.’ And so I was just blown away by the opportunity. So I found a studio as quickly as I could and went and recorded my part of her song. And I hadn’t actually, still hadn’t met her at this point, which was wild. …So we recorded it, she wrote the song, and it just had a great energy.” He added, “It kind of fit perfectly in what I do as well. And the first time we met was when we sang it together live…Which was really cool. And then I’ve sung with her several times now since then. And it was just; it’s really cool to experience that.”
GLOW LIVE TOUR 2022 DATES:
Fri Dec 9 – New York, NY – Beacon Theatre
Sat Dec 10 – New York, NY – Beacon Theatre
Tue Dec 13 – Dallas, TX – Texas Trust CU Theatre
Thu Dec 15 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theater
Thu Dec 16 – Chicago, IL – Chicago Theater
Thu Dec 20 – Boston, MA – Orpheum Theatre
Thu Dec 21 – Boston, MA – Orpheum Theatre
Top Five Country Christmas Songs Of All Time
