The woman behind the Music!MUSIC!

In the early ’90s, I worked retail for five years. This was before digital radio, and the store had three tapes of Christmas music, each about two hours long. From October into February, those same six hours played over and over and over again. Every year. For five years.

By the time I got out of retail, I never wanted to hear Christmas music again.

A few years later, though, I started to come back around, but on my own terms. I began looking for Christmas songs that were unusual, smart, weird, overlooked, or just genuinely good. In 2000, I made a homemade holiday mix for family and friends. I called it Cool Yule. People liked it, so I did it again the next year. And then the year after that. I never really stopped.

Then AI came along, and I wondered if I could use it to make my own songs. It turns out that all of those years of listening to holiday music gave me a sense of what makes a good song.

My experiments turned into The KringleTones, an ongoing holiday music project where I make original songs, album art, videos, and all the surrounding nonsense that goes with it. AI is part of the process, but the ideas, direction, taste, and editing are mine.

What started as me playing around with Christmas music in a new way has turned into something surprisingly real: the songs are out on streaming platforms, the project has its own identity, and every year it keeps growing a little more.