It’s that time of year when every major public place begins to put Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé and Christmas carols on high rotation. This year though Australian pop superstars Sheppard have a new addition to the playlist thanks to their latest single, Christmas Without You.
During a recent conversation with our arts editor Jamie Apps for The Commentary Booth podcast Sheppard’s Emma, George & Amy spoke about their reasoning behind releasing this single, how the past two years influenced the song & revealed their favourite Christmas movies to watch during the festive season.
When asked why Sheppard felt 2021 was the right year to release a Christmas song George explained that it had actually been something they had on their “bucket list” for a while.
“We kept getting asked by our friends, managers, labels & families ‘when are you going to do a Christmas song?’ And for some reason this year just felt like it would be the right year to do it.”
Perhaps it was a matter of desire and circumstance finally lining up in 2021 to create a perfect storm of inspiration.
“Every time we have tried to write a Christmas song in the past it just hasn’t felt genuine,” explained Amy. “Obviously because a lot of Christmas songs involve snow, Santa & reindeer but we can’t relate to that in Australia. So this was the first year where we’ve had something to write about that was actually meaningful to us.”
That meaningful element was the feeling of separation the members of Sheppard, and many others around the world, have felt over the past couple of years.
“We’ve been separated from our Dad for the last two years while he has been working overseas & hasn’t been able to come home, so this will be our second Christmas without him. That was where the song’s inception initially began,” said George. “We decided to write an original Christmas song about people who were stuck either overseas or had one of their loved ones who couldn’t be there.”
With the release of this song Sheppard are hopefully that as Australia, and the world, reopens they will be able to return to live stages everywhere.
“We obviously really want to get around Australia & do a national tour because we’ve only been able to play in Queensland for the last two years.It would be nice to get over to Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and all of these places that we haven’t been to in years,” said George. Although as Emma was quick to add, Queensland wasn’t the worst placed to be trapped recently, “We’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve still been able to perform at the NRL Grand Final & State Of Origin, we’ve been able to release an album here & do our album launch.”
In closing, to tie into the theme of The Commentary Booth the member of Sheppard each revealed their favourite festive films. For Emma she said, “The Grinch is a classic, but I actually watched Bad Santa recently. It’s certainly not PG rated but it’s hilarious.” George then said he “can’t go past Home Alone.” With Amy closing outburst saying, “I love Elf, I think it’s hilarious. I could watch that movie all year round.”
