There are so many things vying for one’s attention around the holidays — last-minute Christmas giving, decorating, cooking, gift-wrapping, the annual Christmas pageant at church — that sometimes the sounds of the season are the last thing on
people’s minds.
Merely a year after the release of her critically acclaimed Love Like This, Ayiesha Woods is bound to change that with her first-ever yuletide collection, appropriately titled Christmas Like This. “Recording a Christmas record in the middle of the summer was a lot of fun,” Woods says. “When it comes to Christmas and the spirit of Christmas, if it’s good music, you can pretty much put it on in February if you want and make it enjoyable.
For Woods — who in her short span as a recording artist has amassed a wealth of accolades, including a GRAMMY® nomination and a nod for New Artist of the Year at the GMA Dove Awards — Christmas Like This is yet another opportunity to
show that music, especially that which is played during the most wonderful time of the year, doesn’t have to settle for the middle of the road.
“You have to watch it when recording a Christmas project because you always run the risk that it could be borderline cheesy,” Woods says. “We were very cognizant of that. When we said we were going to do a Christmas record, we were going to make sure that we’d make it timeless and that people would enjoy it 50 years from now.” Indeed, Christmas Like This, produced by Jamie Moore (tobyMac, CeCe Winans), finds Ayiesha at her very best. From the infectious Caribbean strains of “Joy to the World” to her sweeping, reverent arrangement of “O Holy Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” she knows how to adapt her style from festive to thoughtful, depending on the mood.
Channeling the throwback neo-soul style of Amy Winehouse and Duffy, Woods also offers terrific takes on “Walking In A Winter Wonderland” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” as well as a cooler-than-cool version of the R&B standard, “Merry Christmas, Baby,” originally made popular by the incomparable Otis Redding.
But whether she is doing her best torch-singer impression on “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or showing her sassy side in her soulful reading of Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” ultimately, Woods knows her ultimate purpose is to shed
light on the real reason for the season.
