Stream: Johnathan Rice & Courtney Marie Andrews, ‘We Won’t Be Lonely This Christmas’

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Courtney Marie Andrews (photo by Jessica Hanley) and Johnathan Rice (photo via Facebook)

Johnathan Rice and Courtney Marie Andrews, with an assist from Jason Boesel, have collaborated on a new original holiday song. The somber, bilingual “We Won’t Be Lonely This Christmas” is not only stunningly beautiful, but it’s a charity effort — proceeds from the single benefit the migrant organization Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Program.

Rice said he was inspired by a recent visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he witnessed the plight of migrants and asylum seekers. He started writing the song on the bus ride home.

“It’s about a child and his mother trying to make it to the other side of the border,” Rice explains on Facebook. “Reasons beyond their control intervene, and they don’t make it. This song is my way of calling attention to the current humanitarian crisis taking place at our border with Mexico. Like many of you, I was devastated by the images in the press of mothers being gassed, of little children in cages sleeping on foil blankets. Believe me — as bad as those images are — the worst is yet to come if we do not act immediately.”

Support the single here.

Read Rice’s full statement here.

||| Stream: “We Won’t Be Lonely This Christmas”

||| Also: We have added this song to Buzz Bands LA’s “The Wholly Holiday Music Mix, 2018,” along with four more tunes that came to our attention after we initially published our playlist. Also added: new originals from Z Berg & Ryan Ross and Jessie J; a cover courtesy of the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli and a selection from “A Very Synthy Christmas” by composer Anthony Sabatino, aka Moose With a Scarf. Enjoy the updated playlist, featuring new and mostly original songs, here: