The 12 jams of Xmas: 2021’s best new holiday music
This year brought a bevy of new holiday-themed songs—from ABBA to Beach Bunny to Norah Jones, here are the best new yuletide tunes for your December playlist
Music Features José James
Is there a more tired playlist than your family’s annual holiday music sampler? For many of us, traveling home for the holidays ensures that we’ll not only endure some passive-aggressive familial exchanges we normally spend the rest of the year avoiding; it also means having our ears filled with a list of songs that probably haven’t changed much, if at all, since childhood. And while this can be a warm, welcome blanket of nostalgia at times (hello, A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, old friend), it can also feel a bit calcified. Sure, no one will probably ever surpass Bing Crosby’s original version of “White Christmas” when it comes to pure aural iconography, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like to hear someone try.
And so, we here at The A.V Club have once more dug through the voluminous onslaught of holiday-themed music released over the past year (most of it in the past two months, understandably), in order to find the songs we think you might enjoy adding to the annual rotation. We’ve striven to provide a sampler platter of different genres, styles, and sounds, in hopes that you might find a few keepers—if one track doesn’t suit your mood, hopefully the next one will. These range in spirit from new interpretations of Christmas standards to music that you might not even realize had anything to do with the holidays, unless you listened to the lyrics.
There was only one real condition for inclusion on the following playlist: The song had to be released in 2021. That means we had to pass on a few very recent classics (sorry, Alessia Cara’s “Make It To Christmas”), as well as some songs that were spawned from the pandemic but were technically from 2020, no matter how unfortunately apt they may still be for some. (Wallis’ “Lonely Christmas” might not be a holiday staple yet, but given she’s only 16 years old, it’s safe to say she’s got plenty of time.) Here are the newest holiday tracks to liven your seasonal mood—whether you’re gathering around the tree with loved ones, or just hitting the eggnog hard and looking forward to the year being over.
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26 Comments
Thats an Easter mix though ?
They didn’t seem to have anything Christmas…
“Day After Tomorrow”, the newest one from Phoebe Bridgers, is a nice one. It’s only subtly christmasy (a choir hums “Holy Night” melody in the background), but that’s for the better.
Speaking of timeless, how on earth did it take ABBA until now to release a Christmas song? I mean, it wasn’t until two months ago that someone thought to do a Halloween cover of an ABBA song…
There’s a lot of Halloweenified ABBA in the Community zombie episode.
I discovered this through Rock, Paper, Shotgun and it’s been one of my Christmas staples since.
There are only two types of acceptable Christmas music: (1) old-timey, minor-key religious songs that are kinda scary, and (2) songs that Dean Martin would sing while shitfaced in front of a fire. And they were all made by 1966, before the damn hippies took over.
Yeah – SiriusXM’s Traditional Christmas channel is my all day holiday jam.
I mostly agree but I’d add Darlene Love and some Motown Christmas music to the acceptable pile
I’ll allow it.
In my part of the world its a mixture of 70s glam rock and weird 80s pop, and that song by The Darkness in the early 2000 , AND THAT IS ALL .
this is actually true . The majority of ‘traditional’ Christmas songs in the US come from the era when Boomers were kids (50s-early 60s) , where as in Britain and Ireland its more when Gen X were children 70s-80s. There’s probably a socio economic reason for it, but I haven’t a clue.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_music#United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
Surprised by how much I like Brian Fallon’s hymns album, although O Holy Night was an unforced error. I love his gravel voice but if you can’t hit that high C#, best to stay away from the song I think.
Love The Gaslight Anthem, but his solo stuff really is good. While religious music isn’t my usual cup of tea, that hymnal album is beautiful.
is norah jones holding the stellar starfish from the suicide squad?
I love ABBA. I like the new album. I like their New Years song. But this “Christmas” song is just ABBA at their worse (also you say it sounds like a kids carol—do kids usually sing about their parents having morning sex after having breakfast in bed on Christmas? Okay….)
But maybe I’m just grumpy. I’d also like to point out with the first slide, people had stopped listening to 78rpms by the 1960s, so maybe you meant 45rpms. Unless you think that song sounds like a 1940s big band song or something. Bah humbug and all that.
Utter crap. I would sooner plunge into a frozen lake than hear any of these pointless jingles again.
Twisted Christmas is the acceptable answer for each. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbvs_hsdHbxVMf4fsr0byW0bUd7Ym8zJm
Seriously, you dropped the ball on this one…
I found a good electronic playlist
Also , Norah Jones does that weird thing where she sings out of the corner of her mouth because she thinks it makes her sound interesting , but she just sounds like a stroke victim.