CHRISTMAS PLAYLIST
Tired of chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Add these 25 now- classics from the last half- century to your
CHRISTMAS MUSIC is a nostalgia trip. Generally speaking, pop music prizes novelty, but nostalgia is built into the holiday season, when our secular religion of capitalist consumption gets stirred together with Christian traditions, ancient pagan rites and a vague longing for the old- fashioned comforts of home, hearth and the pastoral yesteryear. We long to hear songs, as Irving Berlin once put it, “just like the ones I used to know.” Radio stations and streaming platforms are dominated by Christmas pop songs, the vast majority of which were composed in the years during and immediately following World War II. The songs are goofy, schmaltzy and nearly always crassly commercial, bald- faced in their eagerness to cash in on Christmas. Yet their association with the holiday season has given these songs an aura similar to that of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Good King Wenceslas” and other immemorial hymns.
That midcentury songbook so dominates hearts and earbuds that the Christmas music of more recent times is often overlooked or regarded as wanting. But the rock, soul and hip- hop eras have produced hundreds of excellent holiday songs.
Many pick up on the themes pioneered by songwriters of the 1940s, ’ 50s and ’ 60s. Some songs cheekily subvert those themes.
There are lots of songs that explore the underbelly of Christmas: ’ Tis the Seasonal Affective Disorder, you might call it, the feelings of alienation and anticlimax that millions experience during the holiday season. There are lots of sacrilegious Christmas songs about things like Santa Claus getting wasted. There’s Christmas funk and Christmas punk and Christmas metal and Christmas rap.
Here’s our ranked list of the 25 finest Christmas songs of the last 50 years.
1 Mariah Carey, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” ( 1994) Mariah Carey’s ebullient holiday jingle is first and foremost a great pop song, with abundant hooks and a propulsive beat. But what makes “All I Want for Christmas Is You” undeniable is its appeal to all comers, the way it incorporates nearly every triedand- true Christmas song move, mood and trope.
For the kids, there’s Old Saint Nick and his reindeer. For the grownups, there’s a wink at sex. The lyric strikes an anti- commercial note (“I don’t care about the presents”), but there’s also a glimpse of old- fashioned Christmase s (“All the lights are shining / So brightly everywhere / And the sound of children’s / Laughter fills the air”); Carey’s sky- scraping gospel melisma adds a hint of spiritual yearning.
In any case, it’s inescapable.
2 The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York” ( featuring Kirsty MacColl) ( 1987) Christmas nostalgia, Christmas debauchery, sex, drugs, breakups, makeups, New York, Ireland, Frank Sinatra — the Pogues’ yuletide ballad packs it all into four exquisite, uproarious minutes. Written and scabrously sung by Shane MacGowan, poet laureate of punks and drunks ( with help from duet partner Kirsty MacColl), “Fairytale of New York” taps into a deep vein of history: It’s set in a quasi- mythic midcentury Manhattan filled with striving ( and barely surviving) Irish immigrants, and the song is meant to evoke such sentimental old Eire airs as “The Rare Old Mountain Dew.” The lovers’ feisty repartee includes misogynistic and homophobic slurs that have caused some critics to call for bans. But few can resist the song’s romance, rowdiness and epic sweep.
3 Donny Hathaway, “This Christmas” ( 1970) Donny Hathaway, who died in an apparent suicide in 1979 at age 33, did not live long enough to see the sultry, sinuous “This Christmas” enshrined as the unofficial Black American Christmas anthem. The song accomplishes an unusual feat. It makes almost no concessions to Christmas music conventions — not a sleigh bell to be heard — but manages through sheer force of good cheer to feel Christmassy. Hathaway’s Christmas idyll is noticeably a grown- andsexy one. No children or Santa Clauses, just blazing hearth fires, late- night caroling and the promise of other adult pleasures. Hathaway’s verdict: “A very special Christmas for me.”
4 José Feliciano, “Feliz Navidad” ( 1970) This monster international hit puts on no airs. It is, simply, a musical Christmas card, wishing you and me and everyone a Feliz Navidad and Merry Christmas — over and over and over. Super catchy.
5 Joni Mitchell, “River” ( 1971) This song from Mitchell’s groundbreaking “Blue” album is a different kind of Christmas song: a ruminative postmortem for a broken relationship, narrated by the party who broke it. So many Christmas songs are about homecoming. Mitchell’s is about leave- taking — about a woman who can’t wait to skate away, on a frozen river, into a new life.
6 Merle Haggard, “If We Make It Through December” ( 1973) It doesn’t sound grim. This 1973 country chart- topper moves at a jaunty clip, and Haggard’s easygoing baritone soothes the ear. But beneath that placid surface lurks a soul- crusher: the story of an unemployed factory worker. “My little girl don’t understand,” he sings, “why Daddy can’t afford no Christmas here.”
7 Prince, “Another Lonely Christmas” ( 1984) Even by Prince’s woolly standards, this 1984 power ballad is out there. It keeps taking strange twists: There are memories of Pokeno card games and late- night skinny- dips; there are images of ice skaters on frozen lakes and drunken banana daiquiri binges. Midway through comes the big revelation. This isn’t a chronicle of a breakup, it’s an elegy.
8 Bing Crosby and David Bowie, “Peace on Earth/ Little Drummer Boy” ( 1977) An intergenerational musical summit as enthralling as it was unlikely.
9 Outkast, “Player’s Ball” ( 1993) The debut single from the mighty Atlanta rap duo takes the Christmas song to novel territory: the annual gathering of pimps known as the Player’s Ball. Christmasthemed puns and allusions come fast and furious, tucked into vivid scenes of macking and partying. “You thought I’d break my neck, to help y’all deck the halls / Oh naw / I got other means of celebrating.”
10 Wham!, “Last Christmas” ( 1986) Has Christmas ever sounded so swanky? Wham!’ s 1986 breakup ballad features a bravura George Michael vocal performance and a periodperfect wash of synthesizers.
11 Aretha Franklin, “Silent Night ( Solo Piano Version)” ( 2008) It would not exactly be accurate to characterize this torrid, operatic performance as “stripped down.” Instead let’s say that to hear Aretha Franklin singing “Silent Night,” alone at the piano with no other accompaniment, is to have an unmediated encounter with something not quite of this world — call it the Christmas spirit, if you like.
12 The Pretenders, “2000 Miles” ( 1983) Over guitars that chime like a bell choir, Chrissie Hynde croons a mystical requiem for the Pretenders’ late guitarist James HoneymanScott, who had died the previous year: “The children were singing / He’ll be back at Christmas time.”
13 The Waitresses, “Christmas Wrapping” ( 1981) It’s hard to resist the Christmas rom- com that unfolds in this 1981 cult classic. A meetcute at a ski shop is followed by months of missed connections. The tale is told with deadpan charm by singer Patty Donahue; her bandmates’ fizzy new- wave funk is not at all Christmassy, and the better for it.
14 Willie Nelson, “Pretty Paper” ( 1979) An old- fashioned tearjerker about a pauper begging for change while holiday shoppers bustle all around him. Bring a hankie.
15 The Ramones, “Merry Christmas ( I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” ( 1989) The Ramones’ guitars rumbled and blared, but Joey Ramone’s punk rock yawp was a plaintive, rueful sound. A perfect pairing, in other words, for a punk- rock carol that combines warped seasonal imagery (“Snowball fighting, it’s so exciting, baby”) with a lover’s plea for domestic tranquility (“Christmas ain’t the time for breaking each other’s heart”).
16 Willie Colón, “Aires de Navidad” (“Christmas Spirit”) ( 1970) Can you worship the infant Jesus while cutting a rug at a wild dance party? You can if the great Héctor Lavoe is fronting Willie Colón’s legendary orchestra. Turn this one up loud.
17 Marvin Gaye, “I Want to Come Home for Christmas” ( 1972) A swooping, scalding ballad in which the soul visionary pleads for a yuletide reunion. “I’m a prisoner of war / Lying here in my cell / Hoping my family is well.” Recorded during Gaye’s most fertile creative period, and you can tell.
18 John Prine, “Christmas in Prison” ( 1973) Over a gentle country- folk waltz, John Prine does the usual: wrings out your heart like a dishcloth with vivid details and plainspoken eloquence. “It’s Christmas in prison / There’ll be music tonight / I’ll probably get homesick / I love you / Goodnight.”
19 Run- D. M. C., “Christmas in Hollis” ( 1987) Run finds Santa’s wallet in the park. D. M. C. rhymes “yule log” with “eggnog.” Jam Master Jay throws sleigh bells in the mix and interpolates snatches of “Joy to the World,” “Jingle Bells,” “Frosty the Snowman” and Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa.” Christmas cheer guaranteed.
20 The Everly Brothers, “Christmas Eve Can Kill You” ( 1972) A hitchhiker braves subzero temperatures, and stares down death, as car after car passes him by on an arctic Christmas Eve. “God forgive the man who drives right by the other man / Have pity on the stranger in the cold.” Brutal, beautiful.
21 Ohio Players, “Happy Holidays, Pts. 1 & 2” ( 1975) The lyrics are a mishmash of yuletide clichés. (“Deck the halls for Santa Claus … / Chestnuts roasting, people toasting.”) But the music is electrifying psychedelic- soul: lush strings, percolating bass and what may be the wildest background vocal arrangement ever to appear on a Christmas record. A stoopfront serenade from the world’s funkiest carolers.
22 Chavela Vargas, “Amarga Navidad” ( Bitter Christmas) ( 1996) An onslaught of recriminations and regrets, stormily sung by the late great Mexican balladeer. “Amarga Navidad” is one of the bitterest Christmas songs in any language.
23 The Jackson 5, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” ( 1970) Children have often been hauled into recording studios to sing Christmas novelty songs. But in 1970, Michael Jackson offered a different kind of novelty: This 12- year- old was, audibly, a vocal genius. The Jackson 5’ s take on the old Christmas chestnut is a pure adrenaline rush. Years later, Bruce Springsteen borrowed the group’s arrangement for his own cover version, an E Street Band concert staple ever since.
24 Ghostface, “Ghostface X- mas” ( 2008) National treasure Ghostface riffs gloriously on things yuletidish, a whirlwind tour that sweeps from the North Pole to wintry Staten Island: “I see snowmen, snowflakes / Cinnamon cakes / Sisters and brothers / Sliding down garbage can covers.”
25 The Kinks, “Father Christmas” ( 1977) Ray Davies sings a very English Christmas song, snarling out working- class umbrage over power chords. A mob of Dickensian street urchins descends on a department store Santa, demanding cold cash and offering advice: “Give all the toys / To the little rich boys.”