Chris Stapleton Promos New Holiday Album ‘A Very Covid Christmas’

The holidays will look very different for many people this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Chris Stapleton lightly poked some fun at the year 2020 with a mock promo for a new holiday album on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week. Kimmel began the segment by noting that multiple scheduled performers at the CMA Awards had to pull out of the show due to COVID-19, joking, “Usually when this many people get sick in Tennessee, it means they under-cooked the squirrel.”

Kimmel explained that he “couldn’t wait” to give the audience a preview of Stapleton’s new album, and the show cut to a mock promo beginning with the singer pulling a bottle of hand sanitizer out of a stocking. “Hi, I’m Chris Stapleton,” he said while sitting in a chair wearing a sweater, a Santa hat and a mask and holding a guitar. “This is A Very Covid Christmas.” He then ran through several songs on the album, which were all fashioned after traditional holiday classics, including “Disinfect the Halls,” “Oh, Clorox Wipes” and “Jingle Bells, I Can’t Smell.”

Speaking to reporters last week, Stapleton shared that he had received a number of requests to make the fictional album a reality. “I think we’re gonna have to have a team of people investigating whether or not we should be making this record,” he said, via Country Now. “Give the people what they want!”

While the Grammy winner isn’t quite as well known for his comedic chops as he is for his honest and emotional music, Stapleton noted, “I mean, you can find plenty of silliness that I’ve participated in if you wanna dig a little bit.” He also praised the writers at Jimmy Kimmel Live for helping him earn his laughs.

“You have at your disposal some of the greatest comic writers in the United States of America, maybe even the world, on these late-night shows,” he said. “The Kimmel guys have always been great to work with, and they propped me up a whole lot. They can make me look funny in times when it’s actually just me doing what they told me to do. So all credit where credit is due. I’m just kind of a conduit for their funniness.”

Along with his facetious holiday album, Stapleton actually released his newest album, Starting Over, on Nov. 13. “In my life, when I’ve needed strength, love, peace, joy, friendship, focus, courage, understanding, hope, or healing I’ve found those things in music,” he wrote on Instagram after the album was released. “As you listen, I pray you find some of those things here.”