Music to Button a Christmas Cardigan By - Walking in the Air

The Maccabees - Walking in the Air

It used to be that bands competed to be seen on Top of the Pops. Now that the BBC is a diminishing force and new media giants like The Tweed Pig have shot to prominence it's likely those young thrusting bands will be competing to be seen on these pages.

Back on earth, we've chosen a lovely version of Howard Blake's Walking in the Air from the London band The Maccabees as our Christmas cardigan song. You'll know this classic from The Snowman, of which we're big fans.

The session where The Maccabees played the song was filmed a couple of years ago as part of a promotion and the video is rightly doing the rounds again. The Maccabees handle the song respectfully and retain its innocent and magic beauty. Singer Orlando Weeks imparts the lyrics with fragility as if lost in reverie.