Trisha Yearwood talks new Christmas album and show with Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

When country music star Trisha Yearwood first envisioned 2025, she thought it would be a “quiet year.” It didn’t quite work out that way.

With her husband Garth Brooks not touring, Yearwood figured to work on a Christmas album with an accompanying winter tour. But then she unexpectedly wound up making an entire new country record, co-writing all 15 songs on “The Mirror” album.

“So 2025 became one of the busiest years in memory for me,” Yearwood said with a laugh, “from releasing a regular album in July to then going right into the studio to record this Christmas album and now to gear up for album release and then the tour. It’s kind of become a really crazy year, and it’s been great, but it’s been a lot more than I thought it was going to be.”

While she had described her “The Mirror” album as being “letters to my younger self,” her “Christmastime” album, released on Nov. 7, offers new takes on songs like “Christmas Time is Here” (from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”), shines a light on some lesser-known songs and even includes a reimagining of “Pure Imagination” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

“It’s not just a cookie cutter: ‘Here’s 12 songs that everybody does,’” she said. “It really was thought through and came out even better than I dreamed.”

The Christmastime with Trisha Yearwood tour will visit Heinz Hall on Dec. 18, and she’ll be accompanied here by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

”I can’t imagine doing it any other way. … It’s just a different thing, just to walk in and be able to sing with these elite musicians is great. This will really be a Christmas show. I would imagine after intermission, I’ll probably throw in a couple of Trisha songs that people know, because I can’t imagine doing a show and not doing some of those songs. But for the most part, I would say it’s 90% Christmas. So if you’re coming, expect to be in the Christmas spirit by the time you leave. If you’re not, I’m going to be worried about you,” she said with a laugh.

In a call from her Nashville home, Yearwood spoke with TribLive about her love of Christmas music, performing with symphonies, becoming a Steelers fan by proxy and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

What was it like to do Christmas music in the summer then?

I made a Christmas album for MCA Records in ‘94. And then Garth and I did the duet album (“Christmas Together”) about 10 years ago. You always have to record this in the summer just for getting everything turned in and turned around, records, press and all that. So it’s normal. What you normally do is, even if it’s 100 degrees outside, we make sure the studio feels like Christmas. So you turn the air way down, we have a fireplace at our studio in Nashville. So they’ll turn the fireplace on, decorate for Christmas. We did this album in L.A., so the guys were great. Some of the crew guys came in with Santa hats on and ugly Christmas sweaters, you just try to get in the spirit. But the music itself, and especially when you’re singing with a live orchestra, it didn’t take long to get in that mode. It was really great.

How did you wind up choosing the songs for this album?

I started out with a list. I kind of keep a running list, especially for when I did the “Let’s Be Frank” album of standards or Christmas songs that I hadn’t recorded yet that I always wanted to. So I had that list going and that list had “Christmas Time is Here” from Charlie Brown on it. It had “Blue Christmas.” I’m a huge Elvis (Presley) fan. But then trying to round out the album, especially toward right before we recorded, I reached out to my conductor and arranger and orchestrator — he wrote all the parts — David Campbell, and Don Was who produced, and just said, we need a couple more songs. And if you have suggestions of songs I might not know, throw them my way. And David said, what about “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka? Which I had never thought about because it’s not a Christmas song, but it works so well. So that was really his call, and I thought it was such a great one.

Then there was a song my friend Beth Nielsen Chapman wrote that she recorded in the early ‘90s. And I have loved this song all these years. It’s called “Years,” and it’s not a Christmas song, but it happens at Christmas. So I decided that was poetic license to put that on the record. So they just kind of all fell together. I really love it because it’s a combination of things you’ve heard before and new things. Garth and I co-wrote a song for the record, but also even the ones you’ve heard before, like “Blue Christmas,” the arrangement that David Campbell did, I’ve never heard anything like it. So I think it really came out even better than I thought it would.

I imagine it’s got to feel a little fresher to do some of those lesser-known songs, instead of the more traditional songs that everybody’s done?

Yeah, and I love Christmas. So when I put Christmas music on in the house, I don’t care. I want to hear everybody’s version of every song. It doesn’t matter to me how many times this song’s been recorded. But, for instance, on “Blue Christmas,” when David came to Nashville for us to sit at a piano and pick keys, and while I was singing it to him, there was a melody line that just out of nowhere randomly reminded me of a melody line in the Broadway show “Chicago.” And I mentioned it to him, I just said, there’s a note that it’s not exactly the same, but in my head, I’m hearing Renee Zellweger sing this song in “Chicago.” He just took that random comment and his arrangement, if you listen to “Blue Christmas,” I’ve never heard an arrangement like this. I keep saying it sounds like a sad circus. (laughs) It’s got this really theatrical vibe to it that I’ve never heard anybody do, so I love that. But it’s a really unique, thought-through record of songs you know and songs you don’t know, but even the ones you know, probably you’re going to hear them in a way you haven’t heard them before.

Which of the songs do you think would be the most surprising? Do you think it would be “Pure Imagination” just because people wouldn’t be expecting that as a Christmas song?

Yeah, I think that’s one. I definitely think it’s one that people will go, oh, I never would have thought of that, but that works. I think “Blue Christmas” is an example of a song that people will be like, wow, that’s different. It’s really different. The song that Garth and I wrote is called “Merry Christmas, Valentine.” It’s really a love song that talks about how one holiday is not big enough for a love that’s this big. I wasn’t planning to put a song I co-wrote on the record, but it just worked. It sounds like it could have been written in another time, so to me, it really works. I hope people will be pleasantly surprised by the selections and here’s some stuff maybe they didn’t know. That Beth Nielsen Chapman song I’m sure will be a surprise to folks who probably don’t know it but should. It’s a beautiful song.

You mentioned “Merry Christmas, Valentine,” so how different did doing this album feel compared to “Christmas Together”?

Because “Christmas Together” was such a Garth and Trisha collaboration, when you’re doing a duet album, it’s so much harder than people think because you have to find songs that you both love. It’s hard enough to find songs you love all by yourself. (laughs) And then, for those duets, because our registers, we don’t sing in the same keys, so to find songs that transition well and Garth in particular is really big about if you’re going to have to switch keys in a song, make it seamless where almost a listener doesn’t even realize that it happens until it’s happened. That’s hard to do. It’s a challenge for musicians to make that work. But the thing I loved about that album was we did a bunch of duets, but we also had standalone songs. So there’s songs on that album that he’s not singing on; there are songs on that I’m not singing on. That made it a little bit easier, but it’s a whole different thing. This album was really just, what songs do I want to do? I really pushed him. We had almost finished the song, but we hadn’t finished it. I kept pushing because I’m like, I want to put this on the Christmas album. We gotta finish this song. (laughs) And then he was kind enough to come in and sing on it. I’m really glad it made the record.

When you think about classic Christmas albums from the past, which of those albums stand out to you the most?

I love it all. I mean, I really do. I love Christmas, so you really can’t play anything for me that I’m not gonna like. But one of the first albums I put on at Christmas time is Emmylou Harris. She has a song called “Light of the Stable” and an album called “Light of the Stable” that is definitely one of my favorite Christmas records of all time, so I start there. I love everything. So anybody who’s made a Christmas record is fair game for me.

When does the Christmas season start for you at your house?

Well, I normally start decorating right after Halloween because I like to put up a lot of decorations and I want them up as long as possible because I don’t want to have to put them up to take them right down. So we’ll start the first week in November and especially because I’m touring for a couple of weeks solid there the first of December, which I’ve never done that before, so I’m usually home during this time so I want to make sure I get in as much Christmas at home as I can before I head out on the road. Those shows are gonna be Christmas on steroids, so it’s gonna be pretty fun.

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How do rehearsals for a show like this work? Do you get there in the afternoon and meet these people for the first time?

Yes, it’s crazy. You show up and you meet them. I have done this where I’ve traveled with a conductor, but I’m not doing that this time. So each city will have its own conductor and its own orchestra. So, for instance, when we get to Pittsburgh, we’ll go in in the afternoon and I’ll meet everybody for the first time. We run the entire show because everybody needs a run-through. So there’ll be an entire show run-through before and then a break and then do the show for real. It’s really like doing two shows a day in every city, but you kind of have to because again, you’re basically walking into a new group of musicians every day. So I’ll be ready for a nap by Dec. 20. (laughs)

It’s got to be such an unusual experience to be playing with different musicians every day for a couple of weeks compared to when you’re with the same band.

Yeah, you get a chance with your band to gel. Even when you tour with my band, we’ve all been together for a long time, and we’ll rehearse, but it still takes you a few shows to get under your belt to feel like, OK, we’re in the groove now. You don’t get a chance to really do that, but the difference here is these musicians are basically born in the groove. You put a piece of music in front of them and they just play it. It’s unreal. Also, we send the musical scores to the symphonies months in advance. So I don’t know what their rehearsal schedule is without me, but they’re going to be prepared before I walk in the door. I’ve never walked into a symphony rehearsal and been like, man, you guys don’t know what you’re doing. They know what they’re doing. (laughs) I’m the one who will be like, oh, I didn’t remember the intro is that many bars or oh, I forgot this is where I come in. And a couple of these songs, which I was a part of this so I can’t complain, but they start in a different key and then the vocal comes in cold in a different key. It was really hard to do live and in the studio, so I just can’t wait for the challenge of figuring this out live. It’ll be great.

Just to shift gears a little bit to “The Mirror,” what were your takeaways from making that album? That was your first in six years.

This one was probably the most important record I’ve ever made even because it was a departure for me because I co-wrote every song on the record. It was kind of the story that I had spent a lot of years not believing I was really a songwriter, and something just clicked in the last few years. When I started writing, I really didn’t plan to make a record, it was really for me, it was very therapeutic. But as I kept writing, the people in my life — I mean, I live with a guy who’s in several Songwriter Hall of Fames — he’s like, you need to record these songs. All my friends who were hearing things were saying the same thing. So I really didn’t have an expectation and I have to say that it’s been the joy of a lifetime to put out an album and have people I respect and love in the industry and fans who’ve been coming to see me since ‘91 say, it doesn’t feel like a wild departure. It feels like a Trisha Yearwood record, but it hits different because you wrote the songs and it feels like we know you better. The encouragement I’ve gotten from the songwriting community here, I started as a demo singer so I know all these songwriters and I feel like I’m back in this community again in a different way. It’s really been beyond my expectations and I can’t stop now. Now the portal is open, so I’ve been writing since the album came out and once I get through this Christmas tour, I’ll pick back up on my writing dates. I just feel like I’ve opened a new world in an industry I’ve been in for a long time, but this is a whole different pathway and I’m here for it. I’m loving it.

What did you find was the most fulfilling part of songwriting then?

It’s being in the room. When you show up and you’re sitting at a table with two or three people, that’s the magic. You sit there and you say hey, and if you know the people, then you talk about whatever, but even if you don’t know the people, it’s such a creative process. Everybody gets really vulnerable and open pretty fast. You might be sitting there talking about who knows whatever the conversation is. It’s like getting together with a group of friends and just communicating, and something will pop out and somebody go, oh, that’s a good idea. Or sometimes they would sit with me and go what do you want to say? I had a lot of songs I wanted to write to my younger self because I wasn’t writing in my 20s and 30s, so I guess I had a lot to say. That process of those several hours that you sit in a room, you just leave there energized because it’s a day and time where we don’t communicate like that as much as we used to because we’re all texting or we’re on our phones or whatever. You sit in that room and nobody’s texting or answering their phone. You’re sitting there having a real connection with somebody and it’s everything, so it’s my favorite part, whether you come up with a song that day that is amazing or not, that experience is worth the time you spent

It looks like it’s been about 10 years since you were last in Pittsburgh, so do you have any memories or thoughts on being in Pittsburgh in the past?

I don’t remember the date of this show, but I did an outdoor show in Pittsburgh. It’s been more than 10 years ago. My husband, by the way, is obsessed with everything black and gold. So he’s a Steelers fan. He’s a Pirates fan. He’s a Penguins fan. So I’ve become a Steelers fan by default. I probably see more Steelers games than Tennessee Titans games. So we love everything about Pittsburgh. But that show, I remember a big outdoor show with thousands and thousands of people. I’m used to watching Garth Brooks get that kind of response. But I was blown away by that crowd that night. They made me feel like I was a rock star. (laughs) And I was like, OK, I don’t know what’s happening in Pittsburgh, but I just want to go back. So it’s a great city. And I am truly — I’m not saying this on every interview (laughs) — I’m really excited about coming back. I have friends there who are coming to the show. So I’m really excited to be coming back.