My Favourite Time of Year – The Florin Street Band – Over the last couple of years there has certainly been a discernible backlash against the predictability of the X factor winner having a guaranteed UK Christmas number one and after last year’s successful Facebook campaign to get ‘Rage Against the Machine’ into the Christmas charts, it seems that many people are even more determined to download anything other than the X factor song as a protest.

Rather than being anti X factor and focussing on protesting by downloading a novelty song or several minutes of silence, the public are now being offered a real alternative by going back to buying a song for positive reasons, simply because it’s a proper Christmassy song that people likes

Over the summer, a composer called Leigh Haggerwood approached our recording group String Section to notate and record the strings for a Christmas song called ‘My Favourite Time of Year’ by the Florin Street Band and as soon as we heard it, all the string players on the track realised that it was likely to be hugely popular. As an independently produced song, it’s a breath of fresh air among overly produced and slickly marketed pop acts or, protest downloads that might make for very strange listening when the 2010 Christmas charts are played.

The song (and beautiful video which was shot at Blists Hill Victorian Town in Ironbridge Gorge) can be heard and seen on The Florin Street band’s website which has all the details of the making of the track and the reasons behind it. I’m playing a busker which is not an unfamiliar role to me as whilst I was studying at music college, I kept student debt at bay by busking!

If the general public like it and download it from the 13th of December (which is the day that really counts for the Christmas charts), it’s just possible that an independently produced song featuring British musicians with no record company backing could prove to be a real favourite, not because it’s anti anything but purely because it’s pro-Christmas, pro-real music and a genuinely good song written by a genuine person who has had the courage to believe in the ability of his own music to make people smile at Christmas and we wish him every success!

The Florin Street Band have their own Facebook Page Here.