Music. According to Kim.

So we've covered Christmas carols and Christmas standards and now it's time to focus on originals. And by that I'm really talking about Christmas songs that you may have heard, but that aren't anywhere near as well-known as the carols and standards. Starting with...

Well, it's the middle of December and y'all know what that means: Christmas is right around the corner. Which means that we've all been listening to Christmas music since about Thanksgiving, if not sooner. I've gotten a few new Christmas albums recently and it occurred to me that my collection of Christmas music is fairly large. So I've been listening to all the different versions I have of a bunch of these songs and decided that it might be fun to write about my favorites. Guess what this is? This will be divided into three categories and thus, three posts. This one focusing on traditional Christmas carols, as it states in the title. The other two? Christmas standards and original Christmas songs. Please note that these are in no particular order and not every artist listed is a country act. Most of them are, but not all. There are a bunch of songs to get to and respecting that, I'm not going to go into too much detail about why I picked each song. I'll...

The nominees: Big & Rich Love and Theft Sugarland The Civil Wars Thompson Square I kept going back and forth between a couple of them, but ultimately my pick for CMA Duo of the Year? Thompson Square. My thoughts on the other nominees? First up is Big & Rich. After taking a break for the past few years to pursue individual projects, they're back to making music together. Their new CD, Hillbilly Jedi , came out last month and the lead off single from said CD "That's Why I Pray" became a top 15 hit on country radio. But I really don't see them having a shot here. Love and Theft. My second choice. As I said in my pick for new artist, I really believe that they have a huge chance of winning this. They just had their first #1 with "Angel Eyes" and have really been making a name for themselves lately. They've put on a great show every time I've seen them. I really like these guys and I'd have no problem whatsoever if ...

Here we go. The top twenty. There's only four more posts left in this countdown, including this one, and then I'll be done and moving on to something else. I think that this part of this countdown was one of the toughest for me to rank. Mainly because a lot of these videos are so close in quality to me. A lot of the others were easier to place, whether they've been in here already or have yet to come. But this batch and the one that'll come right after were probably the hardest ones when it came to deciding what video would go where. And after all that this, this is what I've come up with. So let's get to it.