Rob Thomas has just released his first holiday album, Something About Christmas Time. He put out his first Christmas song, "New York Christmas," back in 2003, though, so what took him so long to finally make an album? Rob jokes that you only have to look at his current hit "Move" -- his first single with Carlos Santana since 1999's "Smooth" -- to know the answer to that question.
"Well, I think, just like with the Carlos song, my M.O. is I like to do something, and then about 20 or 22 years later, I like to follow up on it when it's still hot," he cracks.
All kidding aside, Rob says, "Every year, I want to do a Christmas album, and every year, it's too late because I always think about it at Christmas." But then came the pandemic.
"When everything started to shut down in the beginning of 2020, I was home and I had that summer to make a record," he tells ABC Audio. "I wasn't on the road and it wasn't making a solo record. I wasn't making a Matchbox [Twenty] record. And so it was the only summer that I'd ever had where there was that kind of a time."
"I knew that I didn't want to do a lot of the traditional Christmas covers," he adds, noting that he preferred "songs that I grew up with and the artists that I grew up listening to."
He ended up with mostly original Christmas songs, plus covers of Ray Charles' "Spirit of Christmas," and Bryan Adams' 1985 song "Christmas Time" -- a line from that song gives the album its title, in fact. And Rob got Bryan's stamp of approval, too.
"He loved it!" Rob laughs. "He liked that I also named the album after the song!"