It's The Most Nostalgic Time of the Year
Do the Christmas songs Americans stream on Spotify unveil any contemporary additions to the Christmas cannon? Hardly.
Haul out the holly and thaw out Mariah. Americans have begun our annual tradition of reliving the glories of Christmases long, long ago, with radio stations airing holiday cheer 24/7, stores blaring Santa’s favorites, and your mom pulling out that Michael Bublé CD she got at Kohl’s.
Streaming is no exception.
I’ve examined the Spotify 200 chart each week in November and December from 2019 to 2023 to uncover which songs Americans play most and how those songs differ from the Christmas cannon we’re used to hearing on the radio.
First, Spotify plays for the 40 most-played Christmas titles tripled during those five years.
And while streaming music usage grew in recent years, Christmas music streaming has outpaced overall streaming of the hits that comprise the Spotify 200 each week. While that discrepancy might partially be an indictment of lackluster new music in the early 2020s, it says much more about our increased interest in Christmas classics.
And I do mean “classics.”
With streaming users skewing towards listeners under age 40, are there new Christmas classics emerging among Millennials and Gen Z?
Quite the opposite.
The Top 40 Christmas Songs on Spotify
Let’s start with a rundown of those 40 Christmas songs Americans have played most from 2019 through 2023, including the average number of times people played each song each year:
Twenty-seven different artists recorded these songs, with most artists—including Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms, and Wham!—contributing only one song.
Christmas Means Classics—Even Among Today’s Kids
There once was a syndicated radio format called Music Of Your Life. Popular in communities where the G.I. Generation retired, MOYL (as the hipsters called it) specialized in the music that was popular before Rock ‘n’ Roll: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and Tony Bennett tendered jazz-based Pop tunes from The Great American Songbook.
The Standards radio format disappeared from the dial decades ago. Palm Springs and Boca Raton are pretty much the only places left with a Standards station.
And yet…
Once a year, Americans who weren’t even alive when these Crooners were nostalgia acts bring back Standards’ artists for Christmas. Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como are all among the artists Americans stream most on Spotify during the holiday season.
Add in 21st-century retro artists Laufey and your mom’s aforementioned Michael Bublé and almost half of the most-played holiday favorites on Spotify are Standards.
Early Rock ‘n’ Roll titles represent the next biggest genre among Spotify’s 40 most-played Christmas favorites. Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas,” The Ronette’s “Sleigh Ride,” and the #1 Christmas song on Spotify, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” comprise one-quarter of the top 40.
Like Standards, pre-Beatles Rock ‘n’ Roll from the late 1950s and early 1960s also left terrestrial radio decades ago.
Another 12% of titles are Oldies from the Rock era:: John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, The Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas,” José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”, and The Jackson 5’s “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Even this music from the late 1960s and early 1970s is vanishing from American radio outside of the holiday season.
A scant 4% of streams of the Top 40 Christmas songs go to Contemporary music.
When examined on a song-by-song (instead of streaming plays) basis, the vast majority of America’s most-played Christmas songs are from 1970 or earlier.
Why Do Young People Love Old Christmas Music?
The common wisdom has long been that Baby Boomers seek to recreate the Christmastimes of their youth through music. Although no Boomer would have been caught dead jamming Sinatra in the sixties, those Standards artists are the ones their parents played during their childhood celebrations.
As Boomers continued playing Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, their children now also associate those old Standards with the season.
Today’s parents are largely Generation Xers and Millennials. Several decades ago, pundits theorized those Boomer childhood favorites would give way to the contemporary Christmas titles of their youth from the 1980s and 1990s. However, only Wham! and Mariah Carey have emerged from those Nickelodeon years as a part of today’s Christmas cannon.
Today’s Gen Z kids are jamming to as much Bing Crosby as ever.
Unlike Gen Xers, who at least have faint memories of their G.I. Generation grandparents reminiscing with Big Bands and Crooners, Gen Z’s teens and young adults know Andy Williams, Nat Kind Cole, and Brenda Lee exclusively as “Christmas Music” artists. The vast majority have never even heard “Moon River,” “Mona Lisa,” or “I’m Sorry.”
For many younger Americans, the genre of jazz-based Pop that remained on the charts until the early 1970s isn’t the Standards genre from the time before Rock ‘n’ Roll: The music that dominated America for decades is now simply “Christmas Music.”
Verily, I recently heard of a teen who heard Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon" at an Italian restaurant in summer. He asked, “why they were playing Christmas music.”
(For more on how many legendary artists are increasingly seeing their cataloges reduced to their Christmas titles, I enthusiastically recommend chart expert and music critic Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade podcast episode “Chestnut Roasters.”)
While new generations might not be impacting the style of Christmas music, they are having a significant impact on which titles we play most.
Christmas (Music) Has Become Overwhelmingly Secular
In “The Nones,” Ryan Burge details how the number of Americans calming no religion at all grew five-fold during the last half century. If “None” were a denomination, it would be as big as Evangelicals and Catholics.
That shift is reflected in the 40 most-played Christmas songs on Spotify.
Only 1 song (Nat King Cole’s “Joy To The World”) specifically mentions the Christ child’s birth, making a scant 2.5% religiously themed.
Admittedly, I don’t have comparable data for the Christmas songs we consumed decades ago, but I recall old hymns such as “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night, and, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” being in heavy rotation, alongside 20th century religious titles such as “Little Drummer Boy,” “Do You Hear What I Hear,” and “Mary, Did You Know?” None of these chestnuts are among American’s 40 most-played Christmas songs on Spotify.
Do we suddently get our religion on Christmas Day?
I also examined Spotify’s 200 most-played songs for December 25th, 2023 to find out. About 10% of the Christmas songs we played last Christmas day were sacred. Even on the big day, however, 90% sang of snow, Santa, and the season’s spirit.
Finally, there’s one more issue we need to address…
The Real Queen of Christmas
Mariah or Brenda?
The data doesn’t lie
From 2019 to 2023, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Chrimstas Is You” (1994) is the first song that starts many holidays, often emerging on the Spotify 200 as soon as Halloween is over. Once Thanksgiving is over, however, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” (1958) overtakes it.
Historically, Mariah came out on top in total streams by season’s end—until 2021: Since then, Brenda Lee has garnered significantly more streams, enough to make “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” the overall Spotify Christmas champ of the last five years.
Astute readers will note, however, that Mariah Carey tops the artists graph above. Since she also recorded the #22 remake of Darlene Love’s #17 “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Mariah does top Brenda in total artist streams.
So I suppose the debate rages on.
Do You Need Weekly Updates on Christmas Music Streaming?
The Hit Momentum Report, my paid weekly analysis of the biggest hits on Spotify for professional music programmers, is also chronicling weekly Christmas music streaming. If that information would be helpful to you, subscribe to The Hit Momentum Report for $22 a month, and then have my blessing to unsubscribe in January.
Source for this post: Spotify Charts (2019-2023 for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us
John Denver's Rocky Mountain Christmas: https://www.amazon.com/Rocky-Mountain-Christmas-John-Denver/dp/B008RCO66M
Farewell Andromeda: https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Andromeda-John-Denver/dp/B000002W7W/
Reissuing long out of print catalog was a major part of what launches all media formats.
https://www.musicofyourlife.com/ is still around but it is has mostly moved on to Soft AC since today's "Adult Standards" format is the Soft AC with stuff from Melissa Manchester up to the Amy Grant, Gloria Estefan, Wilson Phillips, etc. era with some token original Adult Standards artists in the mix with more of the original Adult Standards format music over the weekends. BTW, record companies still reissue tons of stuff from the Great American Songbook era, big band era, early rock and roll era, etc. including complete boxed sets, etc. (Frank Sinatra's catalog for the most part is still in print in full, BTW, for fans to check out I'm Sorry, there are lots of older Brenda Lee albums on streaming and Greatest Hits compilations available of all sizes. In fact during the 1980s-1990s, I'm Sorry was used in Bounty paper towel commercials), lots of Nat King Cole albums have been reissued on CD, they are all up on streaming, there are Bear Family boxed sets of a lot of his catalog, etc., a lot of obscure and long out of print albums get put up on streaming services without fanfare but overtime do get some streaming. In fact, a lot of out of print reissued back catalog albums are among the most sought after albums in the physical used market with some stuff that tests well on the radio yet have been long out of print do command big bucks on CD. There is even a company called Archeophone that reissues recordings from the Edison cylinder and acoustically recorded 78rpm era from the 1800s-early 1900s.