Lorrie Morgan says writing a Christmas song is easy—just think sad. “I don’t like many up-tempo happy songs anyway,” she deadpans. “All you gotta do is think sad.” Which is exactly the vibe we expect from a country singer who once sang “I’ve enjoyed as much of this as I can stand.”
Morgan joins Emmylou Harris and others on GET TV’s An Asheville Christmas, a retro-styled variety show where the stars picked their own classics. Morgan went with “Grown-Up Christmas List,” “The Christmas Song,” and “My Favorite Things”—a mix of reverent, melancholy, and just enough nostalgia to make you clutch your cocoa. “Wally Wilson, the producer, asked me to do ‘The Christmas Song,’” she says. “The others are ones I’ve always loved. ‘My Favorite Things’ is on my Merry Christmas from London CD. That’s a holiday favorite in our house.”
She’s also back with Pam Tillis on their second album together, Come See Me and Come Lonely, and the two sound like they’ve been singing together forever. But according to Morgan, it took literal decades to get there. “We weren’t really friends back then,” she says. “We didn’t really get to know each other until the Kraft Macaroni and Chicks tour in the ’90s. Even then, we each had our own bus.”
It wasn’t until years later, after a run-in at the Opry, that they teamed up for an acoustic show—and just like that, real friendship bloomed. “We’ve been together six years now. We share the same bus. Same band. We’re best friends.”
The new album, produced by Richard Landis (the same man behind Something in Red and Watch Me), leans deep into country’s past. “We went back to the songs we loved as little girls,” Morgan says. One of those is the Roy Orbison classic “It’s Over,” which almost didn’t make the cut. “We weren’t sure we could do it justice,” she admits. “But Richard pushed us hard. That was a tough one.”
Even deeper is “Sandra’s Valentine,” a heartbreaker by Sammy Smith that Morgan calls one of her most personal picks. “I knew exactly who that song was written about and what it meant,” she says. “That one’s always stayed with me.”
Next year marks 40 years since her first single. “You’re the first person to tell me that,” she says. “Maybe I’ll throw a huge party.”
Just make sure it’s sad enough to write a song about.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Come See Me And Come Lonely" below!
