I get a lot of email, especially from publicists doing their darndest to push their clients. I think this is the first time in 30 years I was actually intrigued enough to listen, and then to write about it. Enjoy!

As the nation heads to another COVID-dictated quarantine, memories from the past year of shutdown loom large … and are captured in a surprisingly personal music video by singer/ songwriter Elizabeth Chan, who the New Yorker famously called “The Queen of Christmas.” The genre’s most prominent Asian-American artist has recorded and released nine holiday albums, but this year’s release, Celebrate Me Home (listen here), proved to be the most difficult. How to document a year of such hardship, sadness and uncertainty into a spirited, Christmas message?

The result is a documentary style video for her first single, also called “Celebrate Me Home,” which Chan has filled with home videos, family photos, Zoom calls with her band and even footage of her giving birth during the pandemic. The song has already charted as one of the most played holiday songs of the Christmas season.