NASHVILLE, TENN. – British country trio Essex County teamed with Grammy-winning producer Ron Fair for a re-make of the Wham! smash “Last Christmas.”
Available now on all streaming services, Essex County’s version is a dramatically reimagined vision of George Michael’s 1984 sugar pop classic. Given the song’s worldwide popularity, the trio – comprised of brothers Nate, Mark and Kieran Bass – knew they had to make their version stand out.
Essex County changed the time signature to 6/8 and molded the vocal phrasing to fit the new tempo. Then, guided by Fair’s expertise, members swapped the synthesizer for steel guitar, added a sparkling acoustic refrain and embraced the magic of Christmas with a strings section.
“If me and the lads didn’t change it up, it was going to be cookie-cutter boring,” Nate Bass said. “We worked on it until we got it right. Now it is so different. We really made it our own.”
Given the band and the song share the same British roots, Fair found the pairing of the two brilliant.
“It’s a beautiful record, one of the best I’ve ever made,” Fair said.
Fair also produced the band’s streaming hit “So Good,” which launched their career this spring. Since the release of the song and its namesake EP, Essex County has accumulated close to 3 million streams and has been featured in Billboard, The Tennessean, Pollstar, and had video debuts on MTV and CMT, where they stayed in the Top 12 countdown for months.
“This place here suits us down to the ground,” Mark Bass said of Music City. “In Nashville, music is collaborative and celebrated.”
To download/stream “Last Christmas,” visit https://orcd.co/lastxmas.
For more information on Essex County:
Website: www.essexcountyband.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/essexcountyofficial/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/essexcountymusic/
Twitter: twitter.com/essex_countyUK