Lindsey Stirling‘s holiday hit this year is her rendition of “Sleigh Ride,” from her 2022 album Snow Waltz. She actually attempted to record it for her 2017 album Warmer in the Winter but she just couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a cool violin song.
“I couldn’t quite crack the code on it,” she tells ABC Audio. “I feel like I might have tried too hard to, like, take it to a really new place, which I like to do …. and I wanted it to be really special. ‘Cause it was my dad’s favorite Christmas song, and it’s the first Christmas song in all of my memories.”
Eventually, Lindsey says, she ended up “making it a little bit more just delicate,” with “a little bit of like a pop feel.”
Lindsey’s Snow Waltz 2023 Christmas tour wraps up December 22 in Berlin, and then she heads home for the holidays — where her music is banned as soon as she walks in the door.
“My mom really rotates between my music and Michael Bublé. But I tell her once I come home, we can’t listen to my music anymore … y’know, I’ve been listening to this for months! So, I tell her to put the Lindsey Stirling album away.”
In addition to listening to Bublé, Lindsey’s mom’s other tradition is to make one particular, Christmas-only dish.
“My mom makes this great … Jell-O salad,” Lindsey shares. “It’s like an orange Jell-O salad, and it’s got nuts and little bits of fruit. And it is so good … and she only makes it at Christmas. It would be weird if it showed up on the table any other time of year! Like, ‘What’s that doing here? It’s delicious, but why is it here?"”
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