21st Century Holiday Music

New Christmas originals from Courtney Barnett, Pearl Jam, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and more

Jonesing for fresh holiday tunes? Keep reading.

I can’t help it.

When I was 6 or so, if you had asked me my favorite song — not my favorite Christmas song, mind you, but my favorite song, period, the end — I would have responded without hesitation: “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” (What can I say? I have questionable taste.)

It was the ‘80s, and my dad had taped his favorite Christmas songs off the radio, so you would get bits of the lead-in from the DJs and old car dealership ads in addition to the music. It was a scrappy way of compiling holidays songs, and our family listened to that tape over and over and over again every year between, oh, November 1 and New Year’s. 

And when we weren’t listening to that, we were listening to KGOR, the 24-hour Christmas station on the radio that was its source. Point being: I listened to a lot of holiday music as a kid, and not all of it — maybe not even most of it! — was of the highest quality. 

So it’s probably not a coincidence that now, a few decades later, I still consume a truly obscene amount of Christmas music every year around this time, chasing a sensibility I can’t quite define, but it’s somewhere on the wide spectrum between, say, Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” (also a staple of my youth) and a certain Elmo & Patsy novelty tune. (That obsession is why you’re receiving the second Christmas music playlist in this Substack’s five-week history.)

But every year, I somehow discover a song that has escaped my notice. This year, it’s Steve Earle’s “Nothing But a Child.” A few years ago, it was “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’,” by Albert King. Still, finding these musical stocking stuffers requires sifting through a fair amount of coal. 

Example: Around eight years ago, I made a playlist called “Primo Christmas,” where over the years I’ve dumped any holiday music I stumble upon with even the slightest potential. It’s now 1,521 songs and 80 hours long — more than three full days of holiday music (no repeats or skips) — but it hardly scratches the surface of Christmas music available to the curious listener in 2023. It’s also a Grinchian nightmare to listen to.

So a few years back, I started making annual playlists, aimed at tilting the killer-to-filler ratio in the right direction. My favorite is probably this one from 2016, based on a holiday party playlist I made. It’s about four hours long, and intended to carry you through a proper night of Christmas revelry, from cocktail hour through a nice wine buzz to shenanigans (mistletoe? dancing?) through grabbing your coat and moving onto whatever’s next.

Feel free to enjoy that playlist, whether you’re hosting a dressy soiree or having a night in with holiday sweaters or plaid PJs. But I also wanted to provide another playlist, one that I hope serves as an antidote to the overfamiliarity that holiday music can bring. 21st Century Holiday Music is made up of original songs*, recorded in the year 2000 or later. It’s an hour of music, at a trim 18 songs, perfect for queuing up when you’re cooking, hitting the town for holiday shopping, or just because. (Heck, I’ve been known to throw on some Christmas music in July, but then again, see above re: childhood Christmas music.)

The first three songs are some delicious rockers. Songs 4-6 are, I admit, the kind of thing you might hear at your finer retail outlets this time of year, but … in a good way? Songs 7-12 capture winter’s melancholy, while the rest of the tunes bring the mood back up again (mostly). 

I hope you enjoy. 

With a stocking full of kerosene, matches, and wood,

-plu

*-As in, non-standards, not songs that I wrote (ha!). And on the off-chance someone out there points out that Mike Love wrote “Alone on Christmas Day” in the ‘70s, it’s true! But he didn’t release it until 2015, and only in a revised version after Phoenix asked to cover it. [Source]