With the holiday season officially upon us, The Hives teamed up with Cyndi Lauper to provide us all with a unique and much more adult alternative to the typical "Jingle Bells" affair.
"Growing up, it was only 'O Holy Night,’ which I really like now but being a young punk, it was the enemy," said singer Pelle Almqvist to Rolling Stone. Speaking about the track itself, he says, "I think Christmas is just our excuse to go full-out Phil Spector and use two drum kits and the bells and whistles. We wanted to have this juxtaposition of really sweet music and nasty lyrics."
"
A Christmas Duel", which can be heard
here, features call-and-response verses about missing gifts and infidelity. About how the collaboration came to be,
Almqvist says, "
We came up with the song and we figured it was a duet, and we’d always hoped to do a duet with Cyndi Lauper. We thought she had a really cool voice. We listened to her first album a lot on the tour bus." When asked if
Ms. Lauper was a fan of the band, he responded, "
Isn’t everybody?"
The band currently plans to take the rest of the year off to vacation with their families in Australia. "It’s gonna be weird not having a white Christmas," Pelle says. "We’re eventually going to make a new album, but first we’re gonna take the rest of the year off. I’d like to spend enough time in my house to be bored."
"A Christmas Duel" is completely free to download from November 28 to November 30 only but will be available for digital purchase starting December 2. The song can be downloaded here.
Report by David Lowe-Bianco.
