This Is for All the Lonely People: Lee Brice on His New Christmas Cut ‘Single Bells’

The ideal secular Christmas song would be happy, bouncy and full of celebration.

At least, that’s the first response. And yet, many of the most enduring holiday titles mix obvious nostalgia with not-so-obvious melancholy. Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here” (from A Charlie Brown Christmas), The Pretenders’ “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Nat “King” Cole’s “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” or any version of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” all fit the bill.

And so does Lee Brice’s new seasonal offering, “Single Bells,” an interpolation that manages to turn a public-domain kiddie classic into a mature-sounding piece: kind of moody, but subtly uplifting, too. It captures a holiday alone, but it speaks to the general tone of the calendar as well.

“This time of year, when the leaves are falling, there’s something in the air,” Brice says. “I think there’s a chemical in the fall that makes you emotional and makes you nostalgic. If you ever go through a breakup — which I did around [the holidays] a couple of times — you do have a lonely, kind of empty, space in your heart.”

“Single Bells” made an unexpected emotional connection when Halfway to Hazard’s David Tolliver, signed to a joint-venture publishing deal with Brice, texted a piano/vocal version of the song to Brice shortly after it was written. Brice wasn’t particularly looking for a Christmas song, but he always wants to know what D-Tox — as He calls Tolliver — is creating.

“The first second I heard it, I was like, ‘What? Stop the presses. I’m cutting this, period,’ ” Brice recalls. “It sounded like something to me that was original and unique and written great and a classic — one that’ll be around forever.”

Tolliver wrote “Single Bells” with Matt Alderman (“Nothing To Do Town,” “Truth About You”) at the Curb offices in Nashville on Nov. 20, 2023. A third writer had canceled, and the two remaining guys struggled to find a worthy idea.

“We couldn’t get any traction on anything,” Tolliver remembers.

After about 90 unproductive minutes, Alderman rediscovered an idea he had typed into the notes section on his cellphone: “‘Single Bells,’ instead of ‘Jingle Bells.’”

“That was my brilliant thought,” Alderman says. “I looked at it the next day, and I was like, ‘That’s the dumbest thing ever.’”

Tolliver thought otherwise. “We are writing that,” he announced, so Alderman started playing chords at the piano, working with the opening melody of the original “Jingle Bells” for two lines before diverting to a new set of jazz-inspired chords.

“He was riffing on some stuff, and it just came out,” Tolliver says. “The chord progression lends itself to the melody, and away we went, dashing all the way.”

Fortunately for that day’s work, the usual constraints of a hit country song don’t necessarily apply to holiday music. They could use nearly any chords they wanted.

“The thing about Christmas songs is you can take liberties,” Tolliver says. “It’s like eating during the holidays. There’s really no rules. Do whatever you want, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. That’s why there’s New Year’s resolutions.”

They started “Single Bells” with the chorus, mimicking the structure of the original “Jingle Bells.” But instead of sending a group of laughing people through the snow in a “one-horse open sleigh,” they placed the protagonist alone at home, drinking Jack Daniel’s and vacillating between acceptance and self-pity on a day that’s associated with family and relationships.

The song finds ways in both the verse and chorus to affirm that “It’s fine to be alone.” (It beats the heck out a bad relationship.) The singer recognizes that others are sharing his loneliness separately, and he reaches to them through the microphone. “If you’re single,” he encourages listeners, “sing along.”
Before the writing session was over, they used a dramatic bridge to pay homage to the original song’s text, as the protagonist hears people outside “singing ‘jingle all the way.’”

Despite the slow start, the writers found the work went fast. Alderman estimates they knocked out the chorus in three minutes and completed the entire piece in no more than an hour.

One key moment came when they changed the tempo. Alderman originally played it closer to the “Jingle Bells” speed, but on a lark, he cut the piano to a ballad pace. “That was the turning point in the song,” he says. “It was like, ‘Whoa, wait, there’s emotion in this.’ And then, when we did the work tape, it was like full emotion.”

Tolliver texted that work tape, featuring Alderman’s voice in a piano/vocal format, to Brice that same night. Producer Ben Glover (Chris Tomlin, Danny Gokey) heard it around the same time and was just as impressed as Brice with the way the song elevated “Jingle Bells.”

“It’s just a real clever take on it,” he says. “It was charming and kind of sweet and lonely at the same time. I just thought it sounded like it could be one of those songs that could be around for a long time.”

Brice was so excited about “Single Bells” that he recorded his own piano version of it that night, and Glover built on it before sending it along to keyboardist Jamie Kinney. His part was key to the entire performance, which is essentially an elevated take on a piano-bar atmosphere.

“If the piano was right, then everything could kind of fall into it,” Glover says. “Jamie Kinney — who’s a good friend of mine, a producer and session player in town — he’s a wizard on the piano, and he’s kind of the right guy for this kind of song. It kind of does the soulful thing, the Motown-esque sort of thing.”

“It’s a little more Ray Charles, a cool version of what was there,” Brice says.

The rest of the musicians were added one instrument at a time: drummer Aaron Sterling, playing with jazz combo-style brushes; bassist Mark Hill; and guitarist Jerry McPherson, who brought an edge to the sound by running some of his performance through a Leslie rotary speaker. Glover overdubbed acoustic guitar and a pack of background vocals, hanging back deep in the mix. Brice did just three takes for the final vocal, leaning on a greasy approach that couples the song’s sanguine soul with a splash of hopefulness.

Long before the holidays, it became apparent that “Single Bells” worked with a live audience. “I’ve played it out — it wasn’t even Christmas yet — over the last year,” Alderman says. “It starts off, ‘Single bells, single bells,’ People kind of laugh, you know. I think they think it’s a joke at first, and then the song gets serious. I think people get into it.”

Brice’s entire team did. Curb released it to country radio via PlayMPE on Nov. 4. Brice hopes it gets attention not only this month, but every December for years to come.

“Bruno Mars could have cut ‘Single Bells’ — I mean, somebody that cool or that hip,” he says. “But also in this classic legendary [vein], John Legend could have cut ‘Single Bells,’ you know. Lee Ann Womack. I felt lucky to have it in my hands.”