Why This Christmas Song Means So Much to for KING + COUNTRY

Published: December 6, 2024

Why This Christmas Song Means So Much to for KING + COUNTRY

By Movieguide® Contributor

Several years ago, for KING + COUNTRY released their own twist on “perhaps the most reviled” Christmas song, according to PEOPLE: “Little Drummer Boy.”

But fans loved it, and the song became one of the most popular tracks on their “A Drummer Boy Christmas” album. Joel Smallbone opened up about why they decided to revamp the classic.

“It’s this sort of ironic, fictionalized story about this little boy. All he can do is play his drum, and he wants to offer it to Jesus,” Joel told Movieguide®. “I think when Luke particularly — I mean for both of us, but for Luke being a little more rhythmically inclined — when he caught the spirit of the song lyrically, he said, ‘This is amazing. This is what it feels like we’re doing with the arts — offering our gift as best we can.'”

“Some of the greatest heroes that prescribe to are these folks that lived a simple life and just extravagantly loved,” he added. “God smiles on his children — if you want to put it that way — and on humanity when the attitude of our hearts is right. We want to give the greatest — and I would implore you to give your greatest — but once you know you’ve done everything you can, you put it all out there, then you just kind of go, ‘Well, that was offering.'”

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Shortly after they released the song, the Smallbone brothers explained why they chose “Little Drummer Boy.”

“It’s very basic,” Joel told PEOPLE in 2022. “Here we are, seven guys [in the band] playing a load of drums. Why didn’t Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra ever think of this? We just feel like these slightly dumb, very obvious Australian fellows who did something that, for whatever reason, no one ever thought of.”

Luke added: “It was just the lowest hanging fruit of all time, that nobody had put drums on the ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ And we were just there at the right height.”