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Chris Isaak doesn’t just dabble in holiday music — he’s loved it since growing up in Stockton, in California’s Central Valley, listening to Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Vince Guaraldi, Gene Autrey’s “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and Roy Orbison’s version of the Willie Nelson song “Pretty Paper.” Those influences come through on his latest album, Everybody Knows It’s Christmas, released Oct. 14 through Sun Label Group. 

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“I guess whatever you listen to when you’re a kid, that’s in your head and that’s really Christmas — because you’re never going to beat that excitement,” the singer tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. 

Everybody Knows It’s Christmas is Isaak’s second studio album of holiday music. Ever since the first, 2004’s Christmas, Isaak has donned a red custom suit and gone on a brief holiday tour that mixes Christmas music with songs from his four-decade career, including “Wicked Game,” a No. 6 Hot 100 hit in 1991, and “Somebody’s Crying” from the 1995 album Forever Blue. “I’m terrible on dates, but it’s been a long time,” jokes Isaak about his holiday touring. “I’m on my second or third red suit.”

Isaak does justice to some beloved holiday standards. His cover of Chuck Berry’s “Run Run Rudolph” (titled “Run Rudolph Run” on the album) remains faithful to the original, hard-rocking version. His take on the normally upbeat “Winter Wonderland” creates a slow, shimmering ode to winter romance. The album closes with a moving rendition of “O Holy Night,” a suggestion by the album’s producer, Dave Cobb, who worked with Isaak in Nashville’s RCA Studio.

But Isaak bucked the tradition of covering someone else’s holiday songs and wrote eight out of the album’s 13 tracks. “When I’m writing [holiday songs] I’m thinking about — now, this doesn’t sound like me, but it’s me — I actually picture a family sitting around and listening to the thing. I hope that it’ll be something they can all listen to. And it’s kind of enough upbeat energy that they can put it in the background while they’re eating dinner and they can have their argument at the table and say, ‘Turn up the music,’ you know?”

Isaak’s sense of humor comes out in “Help Me, Baby Jesus,” one of the standout tracks on Everybody Knows It’s Christmas. In the song, thieves took off with a camera, the three wise men, Mary, the manger, floodlights and an extension cord. “Where I grew up, everybody would steal everything off your front yard,” he explains. “People had to watch the baby Jesus.

“That song will not be a hit,” Isaak continues. “But somewhere in America, there will be somebody who gets a nativity scene stolen, and their friend will go, ‘Hey, there’s a song for you.’” 

Listen to the entire conversation with Chris Isaak in the Behind the Setlist podcast at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Stitcher, Amazon Music or Audible. 

It was 1985 and Simple Minds were in the recording studio with famed producer Jimmy Iovine trying to follow an unexpected hit after finally breaking through in the U.S. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” was featured in the movie and soundtrack to The Breakfast Club and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in May of that year. 

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Iovine, whose resume at the time already included Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedos and Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album, Bella Donna, was brought aboard for the sessions for the band’s eighth and most successful album, Once Upon a Time. He was pushing the band hard to create something special, singer Jim Kerr tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from his home in Sicily while the band was on break from touring following the release of its 21st studio album, Direction of the Heart, on Oct. 21 through BMG. 

“We were already feeling the pressure,” remembers Kerr, “but Jimmy was relentless. ‘You’ve got to come up with something special,’” Iovine told the band. “’You have to come up with something. We have to have something special.’ 

One result from those sessions with Iovine was the song “Alive and Kicking,” which became the group’s second-biggest U.S. hit and peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in Dec. 1985. Like its predecessor, “Alive and Kicking” ends in a sing-along Kerr says was borrowed from The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” “It’s almost like a hymn at the beginning. And just when you think you’ve heard it all, the ‘la la la’ comes in at the end — which, coincidentally, ‘Don’t You’ had, too.” 

In recent concerts, Simple Minds strategically paired “Don’t You” with “Alive and Kicking” in the encore. Not only are the songs the band’s biggest hits and from the same era, “they’re the sing-along moments,” says Kerr, an opportunity for the audience to participate. “That’s when the whole place sings in tune and where we just stand back and the night belongs to them. It’s a wonderful thing to behold.”

In fact, says Kerr, the genius of those songs is their lyrical simplicity. “The great thing about those choruses is anyone in the world can sing ‘la la la.’ You can sing it in Japan, you can sing it in Oslo. That’s the most intelligent lyric we ever wrote,” says Kerr with a chuckle. “Think about it. The whole world can sing that.” 

Listen to the entire interview with Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, iHeart or Audible.