Christmas Will Break Your Heart

Album: Single release only (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The first new material from LCD Soundsystem in five years, main man James Murphy explained: "There's been this depressing Christmas song I'd been singing to myself for the past eight years, and every year I wouldn't remember that I wanted to make it until December, which is just too late to actually record and release a Christmas song."

    In December 2015 Murphy at last found a window of opportunity to lay down the song in New York during a break between guitarist Al Doyle's tours with Hot Chip. Other band members Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang were home, and Tyler Pope agreed to fly out from Berlin for a few days. "We all recorded this together, reserved a pressing plant slot, and our friend Bob Weston was available to master it quickly," he continued, "so that means, less than two weeks after we recorded it, there is actually a Christmas 7-inch, which feels like something that could only have happened a very, very long time ago."

    Murphy added: "Anyway, for the holidays we give you the previous, very long run-on sentence, and this song: 'Christmas Will Break Your Heart,' which is another one of those songs which had about 75 lines of lyrics, though we've knocked down to eight to keep the suicide rate in check."
  • LCD Soundsystem fans had to wait six years before they debuted the festive song live. The James Murphy-led band closed out the concert portion of Amazon Music's The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special, which premiered on December 23, 2021, with "Christmas Will Break Your Heart," performing it with a string section.

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