Interview with Heather Rankin
Heather Rankin follows her 2016 Juno Award Nominated solo album,A Fine Line, with a Christmas album, Imagine. Her angelic voice wraps her listeners in coziness and nostalgia in this ten-song collection, which includes both original songs, cowritten by Rankin, and traditional songs she grew up singing at Christmas. The evocative imagery in Rankin\u2019s contemplative lyrics inhabit the same deeply personal world Rankin created in A Fine Line, while songs like \u201cWrap it Up\u201d harken back with frivolity to the music she created with her siblings as The Rankin Family.\n\nImagine begins in contemplation of Christmas Past with Rankin\u2019s soaring rendition of \u201cOnce in Royal David\u2019s City,\u201d a song that conjures memories for her of the traditional carols that were sung during the Midnight Masses of her childhood. She also lends her\xa0 \xa0 ethereal voice to a definitive rendition of \u201cSilent Night,\u201d a song she remembers being sung with verses in six different languages at St. Mary\u2019s Parish in Mabou, Nova Scotia. The orchestrations of these two carols by Imagine\u2019s producer, Steven MacKinnon, as well as the addition of the St. Michael\u2019s Choir School, root them gorgeously in the divine origins of the season. \u201cOlde-Fashioned Christmas,\u201d written by Rankin, MacKinnon and David Tyson, weaves the magic of Christmas into the \u201chumble abode at the end of the road\u201d Rankin and Tyson so beautifully conjured in A Fine Line\u2019s \u201cWe Walk As One.\u201d