This Week's Issue Includes: A little Kix Brooks moment, is a country star suitable as a church owner, some pure Christmas country beauty, a Norwegian golden throat, an Americana comeback to watch, a museum visit, country music internationalization, a little bit of Dolly (of course), and more.

Ideas and feedback are always welcome at [email protected] (just hit reply!)

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Every year the biggest artists insist on releasing Christmas albums. Year after year, the same songs every year. But after doing special radio programs packed with Christmas country for several years now, I've learned to separate the wheat from the chaff. Which ones usually become the best Christmas music?

In my opinion, there are three main categories that usually work best:

That Christmas songs are such a big sub-genre within country music is in many ways easy to understand. Since one of the most important cornerstones of what we can call country culture (even in some cases derived from the concept of "southern class," connected to "southern hospitality") is that family ranks high on life's priority list, it fits well to accompany the Western world's perhaps strongest annual tradition, the Christmas holidays, with country music. It also fits well with several country personalities who cultivate their entire image and career on being standard-bearers of country culture.

I myself have come to love everything about Christmas, not least the music. And if I had to let ONE single album play on repeat during Christmas, it would be Chris Isaak’s "Christmas" from 2004. It has everything mentioned above.

You surely have your own favorites. Please write and tell me. Until we hear from each other: I've selected 24 Christmas country songs, commissioned by SAMI (Swedish Artists' and Musicians' Interest Organisation) and you can find the entire playlist here:

PLAYLIST by Honky Tonk Hansson 24 Christmas Songs That Will Help You Make It Through December

For all the good reasons: this is my favorite museum in the whole world. For two main reasons:

If you're gonna listen to ONE Scandinavian Americana/roots singer today, it has to be Norwegian Malin Pettersen. I met up with her today and with only the two of us in a room with her guitar, she sang me her beautiful song "Carolina" in full First Aid Kit standard. Malin is up there with the best, with a voice like an angel. And super nice too.

Follow here: @malinpettersenmusic

The alt-country/rock world is full of overlooked greats, and one of them is Texas band Shurman, which enjoyed some success when they released albums and toured extensively in the early half of the 2000s.

After a long break, Shurman reunited for some performances at roots festivals in Sweden in summer 2025. And that gave singer and frontman Aaron Beavers a taste for more. Now he's here with the solo EP "Thunderbird" and it's easy to understand why other artists like Lucinda Williams and Jim Lauderdale expressed their admiration for Beavers' songwriting - in the same spirit as predecessors Byrds, Eagles, Gram Parsons and of course the great role model Tom Petty.

"Now that we've revived Shurman and gotten new energy, we've started recording TWO new full-lengths, one with original songs and one with Tom Petty covers," Aaron Beavers told me when I met him at a mulled wine Christmas party in Stockholm on the first Sunday of Advent.

Keep your eyes and ears open and let in Aaron Beavers' treasure trove of songs when he comes to your city, somewhere in the world.

Listen to Aaron Beavers "Thunderbird" here
Dig into the world of Shurman here
Why not gift yourself an embroidered Thunderbird shirt to go with your listening to "Thunderbird" by Aaron Beavers. Check it out here

Look what Santa brought... Books you can buy for the stocking:

Have a close look at this picture. Here you see CMA's Meredith, Liliana and Trina, together at the International Reception at Friends In Low Places during this year's CMA Awards week, where they hosted an international crowd of country music folks from, obviously, all over.

Usually not seen by the public, this trio, under the leadership of Meredith Goucher, makes an enormous effort and puts in a lot of work to connect international country music industry leaders year-round. One of their strategy models is built around international CMA "task forces" in all the most interesting regions in the world. I myself am the proud member of the Nordic Task Force where we meet up every quarter or so to discuss and help each other out in everything country music industry related. The task force has ONE goal, and that one is the same that CMA has had since its beginning back in 1958: continue to spread country music around the globe. Reach out if you wanna know more, I am always at [email protected] serving the international country community.

Thank you Meredith and the gang for everything you do to continue growing everything country and, obviously, all over. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

And last but not least, here is some more pictures from the CMA last week.

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