Zak Lyons: “I Celebrate Christmas (Better Than You) began as an acoustic guitar piece I wrote in January of 2020. For a long time it didn’t have any words as the guitar part felt complete alone. In May, I wrote lyrics to the song and named it Totemic. I sent a demo to the rest of the band and we didn’t get round to doing anything with it before sometime in September when a new plan emerged. I went to my grandparents and they told me I needed to write a Christmas song… I liked the challenge and thought we should have a go! I sent Kami a message saying why don’t we use the guitar part in Totemic and put Christmas lyrics to it. We started writing by talking about how this year in particular made us feel about Christmas. The media had already started pontificating about Christmas and we just wanted to write a song about celebrating and having a good time without getting hung up about the 2020 of it all. The song is about being present in the moment away from the rest of the world. The lyric I don’t want to be in the third space is about avoiding communal and online areas and being in the first place which is home. The second place is work. The song for me is speaking to the media… they are the you in the title.”

Kami Ivanova: “I wasn’t sure what a tropical Christmas would sound like when we decided to write a festive song. Zak had the guitar part for a while and we sat down to write some lyrics over it one day, again not sure what a tropical Christmas is all about. But we soon fell into a flow of writing our crazy thoughts thinking about what a 2020 Christmas would be like. I didn’t want our song to be a cliche love song or too jolly. It seemed fitting for this year anyways. As I was recording the vocals from home I remember feeling very self conscious of shouting the words “I celebrate Christmas better than you”, it was so strange. The song came together so differently to what I’d imagined in the beginning but I’m so glad we managed to put our own spin on Christmas.“

Adam Thomas: "Much like this year, this song did not end up the way I thought it would! Unlike this year though I love the way it went, that's what's so fun about writing a Tropical Boyfriend Catalogue song: they evolve and take some very unexpected turns. The first demo I heard was when the song was still called Totemic, and definitely not a Christmas song. The guitar was this lovely Ben Howard-esque hook that I'm definitely a sucker for, and finding a place that allowed the guitar to shine through without getting clouded by my bass was something I really worked extensively on. Next thing I know there's these off-the-wall keys, samples galore, and it's a Christmas song! My absolute favourite Christmas song is Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime, so it's really fun to be releasing something that brings out all of my favourite elements of that sound with our own Tropical Boyfriend Catalogue spin."

Craig Medlin: “When Zak first told me about the idea of a Christmas song, I must admit that I wasn’t fully convinced by the idea. The only decent Christmas music I can think of that was released in my 24 year lifetime was Buble’s banger of a Christmas album, and that was all covers! However, when Zak sent through the vocal and guitar tracks I was pleasantly surprised. I found myself listening to a very catchy Christmas themed song which didn’t have all those cliche’d bells and jingles that most do. When programming the drums for this, I wanted to keep it fairly simple and opt for a more ‘electronic approach’. The rest of the arrangement is fairly simple, so I didn’t want to over do it. I found that a mix of some full sounding kicks and the best clap samples I could find were all that was really needed to bring the whole package together. After that, it all fell into place quite nicely and I’m really happy with the end result.”