Now that another Christmas has come and gone, we can all start making plans for New Year’s Eve. That’s exactly what Trisha Yearwood is asking about in the song “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” from her Christmas duets album, Christmas Together, with husband Garth Brooks.
“Maybe it’s much too early in the game / Ah, but I thought I’d ask you just the same / What are you doing New Year’s, New Year’s Eve?” Trisha sings in the first verse.
The husband-and-wife duo was set up in the studio, ready to record the song together. But Garth seemed to have a different idea of how the song should sound after he heard his wife belt out the beginning of The Orioles cover.
“It was supposed to be a duet,” Trisha explains.
“I said ‘Screw that,'” Garth interjects. “After I heard the first verse, I just walked. I walked out that door while these guys are cutting it. [Trisha] sees I’m not at the mic, so she just continues singing. From start to finish, that scratch vocal—the vocal that you put down while the band is cutting the song—I said, ‘Please, do not touch that. Please do not try and make it better.’”
“What’s interesting to me about that is that I wanted to do it again, you know,” Trisha continues about the recording. “I wanted to sing it again. And [Garth] said, ‘No, remember how like Ella Fitzgerald just kinda threw ’em up there?’ He said, ‘Just leave it. Just leave it. Don’t fix it.’ And so it ended up being the record, and I ended up actually falling in love with it.”
As did we. Listen as Trisha belts out “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” on CMA Country Christmas.
