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You can’t fail with Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me but sometimes you want something different to soundtrack the year’s festivities. Thankfully, the Christmas industrial complex is in full effect, meaning there are endless new options.
We’ve sorted through the best and worst so you don’t have to.
Yes, we all love Mariah. But these new Christmas releases offer an interesting change of pace.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald
The naughty list
They gave it a go and failed dismally. These new albums deserve a block of coal from the Krampus and nothing more.
Pentatonix, Christmas in the City
They’re known for taking carolling back to its primitive roots: a cappella singalongs and, um, a human beatbox. This time – for what is, somehow, the group’s eighth (!) Christmas-themed album – they’ve decided it’s time to embrace a “big-band orchestral sound”. Never thought I’d find myself advocating for more a cappella but a Christmas miracle has happened. Someone steal their instruments to save these guys from themselves.
Jonas Brothers, A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (Original Soundtrack)
Two decades into their so-called career, the Jonas Brothers are still trying to be the Millennial Monkees. “What are The Monkees?” asks your average Millennial, which is only part of the problem when it comes to the Jonas Brothers project (they peaked in their “purity ring” era, surely). A tie-in to their new Disney+ feature, the soundtrack is less Christmassy than advertised. The bouncy highlights Feel Something and Time might be appealing options for seasonal secularists but why would anyone else wrap their presents to this?
The gift voucher exchange
They felt the holiday spirit and even wore a sparkly hat. But these are the office Kris Kringle of new Christmas albums: impersonal, generic, management-mandated.
Kylie Minogue, Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped)
For the 10th anniversary of the album that gave us Kylie and Dannii’s southern-hemisphere disco classic 100 Degrees, the pop icon has recorded four new tracks. The best is similarly climate-focused: Hot in December adds some much-needed electro-pop to the original album’s big-band focus. The others, though, are mostly forgettable, including Office Party, which sounds less like a party and more like a dentist’s waiting room.
Mickey Guyton, Feels Like Christmas
If you want something just a little more powerful than background music, country star Mickey Guyton has you covered. Her impressive R&B vocals are probably the closest we’ll get to vintage Mariah, even if her backing musicians sound like Christmas AI. Bonus points for standout Sugar Cookie, which brings some infectious ’60s girl group action to the occasion.
Lainey Wilson, Peace, Love, and Cowboys (Holiday Edition)
Country music artists are overindexed in the Christmas music market, which makes sense considering they’re the only people who still believe in Santa. Lainey Wilson’s drawl sounds like smoke pouring from a chimney at twilight but her duet with the ghost of Bing Crosby on Let It Snow feels sacrilegious. Much better is Christmas Cookies, a jaunty fiddle jam that’s all about overindulging on shortbread.
The Pretty Reckless, Taylor Momsen’s Pretty Reckless Christmas
For the 25th anniversary of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Gossip Girl icon Taylor Momsen – who played little Cindy Lou Who opposite Jim Carrey’s Grinch – has decided to launch back into Where Are You, Christmas?, the song she first sang as a cherubic eight-year-old in the film. But this isn’t your grandma’s Cindy Lou Who: with her Hole-inflected rock band The Pretty Reckless, Momsen brings the rage. A great Christmas-lunch option if you come from a family of bikies.
Christina Aguilera, Christmas in Paris
Let a true diva show you how it’s done. Another movie tie-in, this time from a concert film celebrating the 25th anniversary of Xtina’s classic My Kind of Christmas, Christmas in Paris is one to practise your melismatic vocal runs to. The live element is annoying – the otherwise enjoyable Latin-style Little Drummer Girl with Sheila E fumbles into jam territory – but there’s a sultry Santa Baby that demands a cigarette afterwards.
The god (aka Mariah) tier
The pinnacle of the genre. These new albums should become Christmas standards, holding pride of place next to your Chris Isaak Christmas CD.
Polish Club, Christmas Stinks!
The Sydney duo of David Novak and John-Henry Pajak have gone all-out for their Christmas debut. The multi-genre exercise includes a rollicking noise cover of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime and an acid rave version of Little Drummer Boy but the highlight is surely Novak’s duet with his mum Eileen on Ang Aking Pamasko, a Filipino carol made famous by her own band The New Minstrels in the ’70s.
Laufey, A Very Laufey Holiday: The Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town Edition
If anyone deserves the Christmas treatment it’s pop’s leading personification of a sugar plum fairy. Originally released in 2022, the Icelandic-Chinese star has updated her seasonal smash with a swooning orchestral version of Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. The vibes here are cuter than Sanrio characters, and the bossa nova is so swinging that you’ll be twirling around the kitchen like a hula-hoop.
Various artists, Verve Remixed Holiday
Esteemed jazz label Verve has let burgeoning EDM DJs into its Christmas vaults, and the result is surely the weirdest of the bunch. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Ella Fitzgerald doing a psytrance version of We Three Kings, or Mel Torme singing The Christmas Song over a Balearic beat, this one’s for you. In a season overrun by sleigh bells and strings it’s an inspired change of pace, and a perfect option if your Christmas involves MDMA.
Morgan Wade, Christmas In My Dreams
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fixture brings her bah humbug, down-in-the-dumps, bluesy authenticity to Christmastime, with a set of stunning originals. On Christmas in My Dreams she imagines the road trip with the kids she might’ve experienced had she not blown it with her ex (“Christmas Eve feels like a threat, waking up to an empty bed”), and on Same Old Lang Syne she’s drinking six-packs in the liquor store car park with an ex who’s gone on to a sad hetero-marriage. There’s also the world’s most depressing cover of Mariah’s All I Want for Christmas, reinterpreted as a drunkard’s anthem from the rim of the toilet bowl. It’s about time Christmas got a bitter masterpiece.
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