Michael Cerveris to Release New 'Christmas This Year' Single Composed By David Heatley

"Christmas This Year" is a new holiday song composed by David Heatley, sung by Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris. It will be available on all streaming and digital platforms November 29, 2022 from Dream Puppy Records.

The contributing musicians on "Christmas This Year" are guitarist Pete Galub. Rebecca Crenshaw on violin, percussion by Doug Garrison and Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris on vocals. Sessions were recorded at Restoration Sound in Brooklyn, NY and Chris Butcher Studios in New Orleans, engineered by Lorenzo Wolff and Chris Butcher and produced by Heatley. The track was mixed by Mark Bingham and mastered by Dave Glasser, Airshow.

Heatley didn't set out to write the saddest Christmas song ever written, but that might be what he's pulled off. The song first came to him around Christmas 2021, as his daughter was getting ready for college and the empty nest started to loom. But he didn't finish writing it until July 2022, an odd time of year to be conjuring a holiday scene, which might have added to the song's bleakness. "Christmas This Year" tells the story of a lonely man, left alone during the holidays to drink himself into oblivion and reflect on the end of his marriage-a fate not dissimilar to Heatley's own father.

Heatley describes the process of bringing the track to fruition, "The lyrics and melodies seemed to call for an epic, over-the-top orchestral soundscape and a vocalist who could take it to the soaring emotional heights it deserved. I've long been a fan of Michael Cerveris, especially in his roles as Sweeney Todd and Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home, for which he won a Tony Award. We became fast friends during the recording of my most recent record, but when I asked if he'd be willing to sing this song and he agreed, I still felt impossibly lucky. I couldn't be happier with how he performed it.".

Though the story is bleak, there's a searing truthfulness to the song, a carefully nuanced portrait of a particular soul longing to move beyond his limits at a time of year where he feels pressured to have an Ebeneezer Scrooge moment and suddenly embrace life. For now, the revelation eludes him. All he can do is hope that, though his own fate may be sealed, his ex-wife could have a chance at happiness.

"I'm glad you didn't stay another day living in this wretchedness and fear." The song's antihero can't be alone in his specific misery, which the holidays only tend to highlight and sharpen. There are probably countless people out there, alone and full of longing on Christmas Day. This song is for them.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski