Get Your Fa-La-La-La-La's Out! Here's Your 2016 Holiday Albums Guide
What, you haven’t picked up any new holiday albums this year? Time to stop tending to the Yule log and start tending to the Yule la-la-las. Music may not be the reason for the season, but it’s close enough, especially when some of our favorite pop, country, R&B, and rock performers surprise us with Christmas side projects. Here are our 12 Albums of Christmas, 2016 — the dozen new releases that, between them, truly offer something for everyone from 1 to 92:
Pentatonix, A Pentatonix Christmas
At least there’s one thing you can always be sure of with a Christmas album from Pentatonix: no gloppy string arrangements. This is the fifth straight year that the a cappella group has put some kind of new holiday release in the marketplace; amid all that material, who even realized that they were holding out on giving us their version of “White Christmas” until now? The fivesome are capable of offering up the occasional outlier choice, like when they covered Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” a couple of years ago. This time, once they get past the overfamiliar carols, Pentatonix covers *NSync’s rarely revived “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” and two nonholiday picks: (inevitably) Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and (less inevitably) “Coldest Winter,” the Kanye West by-way-of-Tears-for-Fears track from 808s and Heartbreak. If only they could get Kanye to guest on their NBC special Dec. 14, it would be a true Christmas miracle.
R. Kelly, 12 Nights of Christmas
There is nothing over-familiar about R. Kelly’s track list; all 12 tracks are brand-new originals. Granted, if you’re not a major fan of the R&B titan’s bedside manner, you may be wishing for “Jingle Bells” by about the tenth time he expresses a wish to remove all your wrapping paper or do untold things to your stocking. 12 Nights is actually one of Kelly’s least NSFW collections; there are sentiments as innocent as “I’m just a snowman, looking for a snow girl/Looking for someone who can share my snow world.” But rest assured that “I want to make love for Christmas” is the operative mantra. Most quotable lyric: “Girl just let me unwrap you/See, your body will be my gift tonight/Mrs. Claus/And I promise we’ll deck all the halls/With shadows of you and me on the walls.” Runner-up: “It’s Christmas, for Christ’s sake/Would you like to spend 12 nights of Christmas with me?”
Kacey Musgraves, A Very Kacey Christmas
Everyone’s favorite female country upstart of the 2010s has stated that she likes sad Christmas songs, and that’s why she co-wrote this album’s “Christmas Always Makes Me Cry.” But she must not like them all that much, because everything else about this collection produces a carefree buzz… and we don’t say that just because she mentions being “higher than the angel on the Christmas tree” in her duet with Willie Nelson, “A Willie Nice Christmas.” It’s so light-spirited that it borders on being whatever the country equivalent of twee is, at times; you may wish she’d spent more time recording elegant material like “What Are You Doing Christmas Eve?” and foregone the Chipmunks cover or “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” a song that need never be revived by anyone. But her inclusion of four originals put her ahead of the game. And you won’t hear any other Christmas album, even by fellow artists in the genre, with band arrangements that so distinctively use a steel guitar (Paul Franklin’s!) to cement the connection between old-school C&W and the Hawaiian feel spotlighted on “Mele Kalikimaka.” Maybe all that time on Willie’s bus rendered her incapable of delivering anything but the year’s most insistently laid-back and convivial Christmas collection.
The Killers, Don’t Waste Your Wishes
Full-length Christmas albums from rock bands remain a rarity. The Killers got to theirs one step at a time — by releasing holiday singles 10 years in a row, until they finally had enough to compile as a full-length (and throwing in a new, 11th track for good measure). It’s a pleasure to have all these one-offs in one place, as Brandon Flowers has established himself as the most original writer to repeatedly and recently work in the Christmas idiom. As titles like “Joel the Lump of Coal” and “Joseph, Better You Than Me” would indicate, he’s not afraid to go off the holiday reservation for extrabiblical narratives or look for an intersection of myth, melancholy, and whimsy. He also has the most varied guest list, from Elton John to Dawes to Jimmy Kimmel to Richard Dreyfuss. He saved the best duet partner for last: The new track, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (the only nonoriginal), starts with an explanation of the tune’s wartime origins before bringing in a veteran, his most beloved elementary school teacher, now 86.
Andra Day, Merry Christmas from Andra Day
The R&B breakout star keeps it short and sweet with this EP — five songs, 16 minutes. The leadoff track and best reason to pick this up, “Someday at Christmas,” her duet with Stevie Wonder, was released as a single last year, but you probably missed it then. So don’t now: Their voices are magic together, and it’s probably the first version of the song since Wonder’s original 49 years ago that you really need. The other four tracks hew toward traditional territory, but her jazzy voice puts a distinctive spin on all of them. She’s almost sultry to sing something like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” which, in her hands, sounds just about as sexy as Eartha Kitt doing “Santa Baby.”
Amy Grant, Tennessee Christmas
You may think of Grant as the former or current queen of Christmas music, but she hasn’t actually released an all-new holiday set since 1999. This is her best since the first, A Christmas Album, all the way back in 1983, and is in a similar low-key vein. It may surprise and even dismay those expecting something more akin to the holiday albums she put out in-between, which were more orchestrated and brassy, and maybe more religious, too. Grant was in the news recently when one of the two major Christian retail chains declined to even carry Tennessee Christmas, despite Grant’s status as the biggest star ever to come out of the CCM genre. Picking through the album for clues as to why they nixed it: Maybe it’s the sauciness of her duet with husband Vince Gill, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — even though she left out the “maybe just a half a drink more” line? Maybe it’s that she makes up for that by referencing opening a bottle of wine after the kids are asleep on the original “Christmas for You and Me”? Maybe it’s the presence of two surprisingly unjoyful ballads, “Melancholy Christmas” and “Another Merry Christmas”? The fact that the secular material vastly outweighs the two hymns? Regardless, if you’re a fan who isn’t running a Baptist retail chain, you’ll probably be pleased with this return to mostly acoustic form.
Lauren Daigle, Behold
Here’s an album that, unlike Grant’s, all the Christian retail chains are stocking… but don’t hold that against it. Daigle only released one full-length album prior to this holiday release, but it was enough to make her the new queen of CCM and the year’s top Christian artist in Billboard. Even the irreligious would have a hard time not falling in love with the voice on Behold, which is so smoky, she sounds born to sing jazz, and not just contemporary spirituals. That’s pretty much what she does on this set, which mostly recasts a mixture of secular and religious Christmas standards with a smallish instrumental combo. Sometimes it gets very small: “Little Drummer Boy” has her accompanied only by a lightly strummed electric guitar, except when she sings a wordless duet with a trumpet in the middle. There’s plenty of trombone and sax, too, but the sound never veers into dreaded big-band territory. We know the title is supposed to point upward, but Daigle’s vocal chops and good taste are the things we’re most beholden to on first listen.
Leslie Odom Jr., Simply Christmas
If you want a male voice to fall in love with this Christmas, with jazzy arrangements even more minimal than Daigle’s, Odom Jr. is your guy. He’s best known for his Tony-winning run as the original Aaron Burr in Broadway’s Hamilton (following TV runs on CSI Miami and Smash), but he is not throwing away his solo-album shot, having topped the jazz charts when he released his first record in June. He quickly followed it with this eight-track holiday collection, which won’t win any awards for originality in song choices, but which will make you wonder if the angel atop your tree has come to life and burst into song.
Loretta Lynn, White Christmas Blue
Lynn has talked for years about how she’s been writing original Christmas songs in the five decades since the release of her prior holiday album, 1966’s Country Christmas. Unfortunately, only one of those previously unheard self-penned tracks appears here, as the title cut of White Christmas Blue, so someone decided along the way that everyone would rather hear Loretta revive “Jingle Bells” and “Away in a Manger” than dig into her own stockpile. That’s OK: what fan of coal miners and their daughters doesn’t want to hear what it sounds like to have Santa visit the holler when Lynn twangily recites “The Night Before Christmas”? She also recuts two of the tracks from the ’66 album, including “To Heck With Ole Santa Claus,” which finds the veteran as able to touch base with her bratty preteen side as ever.
Elizabeth Chan, Five Golden Rings
Occasionally you’ll find artists with a serious devotion to Christmas music, whether it’s the Killers putting out a new holiday single annually or Neil Diamond being on his fifth Christmas album this year. But Chan may be the first artist in history — the first pop artist, anyway — to devote her recorded oeuvre exclusively to Christmas music. That is not a misprint or exaggeration: With Five Golden Rings, she is on her fifth full-length album, and there is not a lick of nonseasonal material on any of ’em. And about half of all her albums consist of original Christmas material. With a mania this single-minded, you might be wondering if Chan simply hasn’t got what it takes to go outside the genre and cut, you know, “Easter Parade” or “Monster Mash” or something. But she uses staying inside the (gift) box as a chance to expertly explore the nooks and crannies of Christmas subgenres, from the ’80s pop/funk of “Sleigh” to a fair amount of pure jazz. She’s also the only caroler this year to have both Spanish-language and Chinese bonus tracks.
Jaymay, Fallin’ Like Snow
For me, this was the discovery of the year: a sweet-voiced, slightly tart New York-based female singer/songwriter who moves effortlessly from the tunefully grungy classic rock of the leadoff track, “This is a Christmas Song, My Love,” to a good number of more solemn originals and standards that employ the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the self-penned stuff, standouts include “Up in the Sky,” which anticipates Santa as a messianic figure ready to heal a broken world, and the delightfully prosaic “For Christ’s Sake, Pick Up the Phone,” a pop anthem for anyone who’s not quite sure whether they’ll be spending Dec. 25 alone or not. If you buy off her website, the 13 basic tracks are augmented by another 13 bonus tracks. That’s the way to go, if only to get her version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — rendered as a nonduet (maybe for the first time?). The song was written in a way so that it works perfectly well with either just the male or female part, and with the dude gone, it’s a little less date-rapey.
Various artists, A Capitol Christmas
It’s hard to find collections of Christmas oldies that don’t have a lot of dreck decking the halls alongside the true gems. But Capitol has a strong enough library to put out an all-killer, no-filler set like this 24-track CD/download-double-LP, as good a one-stop vintage Christmas music winner as you’re going to find. Yes, it kicks off with Nat’s “Christmas Song,” but includes a lot of less ubiquitous tracks that should be in every collection, like “The Man With the Bag” by Kay Starr (who just passed away), June Christy’s fabulous “The Merriest,” and Julie London’s sultry “I’d Like You for Christmas.” Plus, the version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” here, by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer, is so wonderful it’ll make you forget why you ever came to hate the tune.
If these don’t sate your fireside needs, there are more to choose from, of course. We couldn’t cover everything, but here’s our near-complete list of the other new “name” holiday releases of 2016:
Pop:
She & Him, Christmas Party
Jimmy Buffett, ‘Tis the SeaSon
Sarah McLachlan, Wonderland
Neil Diamond, Acoustic Christmas
Straight No Chaser, I’ll Have Another… Christmas
Frankie Valli, ‘Tis the Seasons
Jackie Evancho, Someday at Christmas
Country:
Brett Eldredge, Glow
Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood, Christmas Together
Jennifer Nettles, To Celebrate Christmas
Chris Young, It Must Be Christmas
Reba McEntire, My Kind of Christmas (Cracker Barrel exclusive)
Rascal Flatts, The Greatest Gift of All
Oak Ridge Boys, Celebrate Christmas
Gatlin Brothers, We Say Merry Christmas
CCM:
Matt Redman, These Christmas Lights
Matthew West, Unto Us: A Christmas Collection
Jordan Smith, ‘Tis the Season
Christy Nockels, The Thrill of Hope
Folk, jazz and eclectic:
David Bazan, Dark Sacred Night
Katie Melua, In Winter
Jane Lynch, A Swingin’ Little Christmas!
Kenny Lattimore, A Kenny Lattimore Christmas
Reissues and collections:
Various artists, Joyful Jazz! Christmas With Verve! The Instrumentals!
Various artists, Joyful Jazz! Christmas With Verve! The Vocalists!
Various artists, Big City Christmas (Bear Family oldies)
Various artists, Jazz Dispensary Holiday Treats (red vinyl only)
Various artists, Christmas on the Lam and Other Songs from the Season (Americana)
The South Park cast, Mr. Hanky’s Christmas Classics (scented brown vinyl)
Merle Haggard, Merle Haggard’s Christmas Present (vinyl only)
Glen Campbell, That Christmas Feeling (vinyl only)
Joseph Washington Jr., Merry Christmas to You (colored vinyl or MP3 only)
Singles:
Josh Groban, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
The Lumineers, “Blue Christmas”
The Regrettes, “Marshmallow World”
Trey Songz, “Comin Home”
Kelsea Ballerini and Joey Alexander, “My Favorite Things”
Low, “Some Hearts (at Christmas Time)”
Simple Plan, “Christmas Every Day”
Toby Mac, “Bring On Holidays”
John Oates f/ the Time Jumpers, “Santa Be Good to Me”
Best Coast, “Christmas and Everyday” (Amazon exclusive)
