The 33-year-old singer dished to ET about her new release.
’Tis the season! Fantasia Barrino is giving fans a dose of classic holiday tunes with her new release, Christmas After Midnight.
ET caught up with Barrino during a promo shoot in Los Angeles last week, where she dished about the album being inspired by her late grandmother, whose birthday was on Christmas.
“Christmas was everything for her,” the American Idol alum revealed while reminiscing about her favorite Christmas memories of “good music” and “nothing but love.”
“I want to keep that going. I feel like times have changed, families have changed,” Barrino explained. “People are not as close anymore as they used to be, and one thing about our house was music always kept us close.”
The 12-track album, which was released on Oct. 6, features Barrino’s rendition of classic holiday songs including “Silent Night,” “This Christmas” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
“I wanted to bring out an album that would bring that love [and] joy back, and when people listen to it they have memories of their grandparents or what their uncles and aunties used to do,” she said, adding that the “soulful” album is full of “real music.”
“I call it ‘rock soul,” she explained. “I hope people will enjoy it. I tapped into James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson. I always push myself to do things that people wouldn’t think that I would do.”
“It’s a little bit of everything on there,” the mother of two continued. “I’m hoping that when they [play the album], that love that we used to have, that bond that we used to have in families, will come back.”
To promote Christmas After Midnight, Barrino will be hitting the road for a monthlong holiday tour kicking off Nov. 19 at the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas.
