Every December, Christmas music divides itself into two categories. There’s the music that fills the season — pleasant, competent, doing its job and nothing more. And then there’s the music that defines it. The songs you find yourself humming in February. The albums that come out with the decorations every November and feel just as good as the first time.
2025 gave us more of the second kind than any season in recent memory. A lot more.
The pop side made its case early. Kylie Minogue returned with Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped) — the tenth anniversary of her 2015 holiday record, expanded with four new tracks — and the new material was the whole story. “Hot In December” is an electropop track laced with jingle bells that landed on every party playlist it was eligible for, because it was built for exactly that and built brilliantly. Danceable, immediate, completely certain of what it wants to be. “Office Party” brought a knowing, camp wink to the season that nobody else was providing, and the duet of “Christmas Wrapping” with Iggy Pop turned out to be the year’s most improbable pairing — two artists from entirely different worlds, somehow making perfect sense together in a song that had always been slightly off-kilter anyway. Gwen Stefani added “Hot Cocoa” and “Shake the Snow Globe” to a new deluxe edition of her holiday album with the ease of someone who has always known how to make pop Christmas music feel personal rather than manufactured. Girls Aloud’s Christmas ‘Round at Ours gave a new generation the chance to discover their beloved 2005 Christmas recordings. The fuss, it turned out, had always been entirely justified.
This corner of the season was quieter than it deserved to be. Pop Christmas music at its best reaches people that no other format can — not just devoted listeners, but the casual listener catching something on the radio in November and carrying it with them all the way to New Year’s. The artists who showed up for it in 2025 proved exactly why more should.
The fun side of the season arrived in force, and at times felt like it was competing with itself. Pentatonix dropped Christmas in the City and Straight No Chaser dropped Holiday Road on the same day — two of the great a cappella acts going head to head in mid-November. Rather than one drowning out the other, both found their people immediately, because they were offering genuinely different things. Pentatonix’s “Bah Humbug” was one of the year’s most enjoyable tracks, a playful take on seasonal scepticism that somehow left you feeling more festive. Straight No Chaser built their nine-voice blend into something that felt like the best kind of company — warm, witty, the sort of record you put on when you want the room to feel different.
Brad Paisley’s “That Crazy Elf (On The Shelf)” earned its place in the rotation the honest way — by making people laugh. Mickey Guyton’s “Sugar Cookie” and “Mistletoe Kisses” brought playful, original energy to her debut Christmas album, sitting comfortably alongside her breathtaking “O Holy Night” and a duet with Michael Bolton that neither of them had any business making sound that good. LeAnn Rimes reminded everyone on Greatest Hits Christmas that “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” belong to her as much as to anyone, then added two new tracks to make sure the point landed. The Futureheads made “Christmas Was Better in the 80s” sound exactly as knowing and funny as the title suggests. The Chess Records Christmas Album crackled like a great party from start to finish — Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” sitting next to soul grooves and swing instrumentals with the confidence of music that has simply never needed updating. And for a younger audience, JVKE and Forrest Frank’s surprise collaborative album This Is What Christmas Feels Like arrived in December and immediately found its people — warm, melodic, completely unpretentious about what it was trying to do.
A great Christmas song that’s also just a great song doesn’t expire. The best of what 2025 delivered here will still be getting played in 2030.
Not everything great about the season was loud about it. Some of 2025’s most lasting records were the ones that simply sat down beside you quietly and stayed. Chris Rea’s The Christmas Album gathered recordings from across his catalogue, including the iconic 1988 re-recording of “Driving Home for Christmas,” and delivered something unlike almost anything else in the seasonal landscape — bluesy, unhurried, contemplative, a voice that suits winter in a way that’s hard to explain and impossible to miss. Trisha Yearwood’s Christmastime put one of the finest voices in contemporary music against lush orchestral arrangements and simply got out of the way. Chris Young co-wrote the majority of I Didn’t Come Here To Leave, which told you immediately how seriously he was taking it, and the record rewarded that seriousness with material that felt genuinely lived-in. Darius de Haas brought Broadway elegance and jazz sensibility to Let Me Carry You This Christmas, a record that rewarded proper attention and didn’t apologise for asking.
These are not the albums that dominate the December conversation. They tend to be the ones people reach for in January, when the season is over and they find themselves still wanting it.
The jazz and big-band side of the season covered the full range of what that tradition offers, from the loudest end of December to the quietest. Wycliffe Gordon’s Holiday Fun landed firmly at the loud end — brass-forward swing with the kind of full-throated playfulness that makes you want to turn the volume up immediately, a record that sounds like the party has started whether you were ready for it or not. Herb Alpert at ninety years old played trumpet on Christmas Time Is Here with complete clarity and warmth, the sound of someone who has spent a lifetime understanding what this music is for and has absolutely not forgotten. At the other end of the dial, Emmaline’s smooth jazz vocal on The Christmas Album found the quieter corner of December — eight tracks for the evenings when the parties are over and the season finally gets to breathe. Eric Benét’s It’s Christmas brought R&B warmth to the standards with the ease of someone who genuinely belongs in the format. And CeCe Winans’ Joyful, Joyful delivered what gospel Christmas music delivers when it’s made by someone who lives it rather than performs it — her voice on “Go Tell It on the Mountain” commanding and tender at once, the whole album earning its title without effort or announcement.
The season’s most moving moment, though, belonged to a voice that would not return. Roberta Flack died in February 2025 at the age of 88. Holidays — blending new material with selections from her beloved The Christmas Album — brought her back to the season one final time. She had always brought a quality of attention to everything she recorded, a warmth that made familiar songs feel intimate and newly considered. Listening to it in December felt less like encountering a posthumous release and more like receiving something that had always been meant for this moment. It will be on Christmas playlists for a very long time, for reasons that have nothing to do with sentiment and everything to do with the music itself.
The returns gave the season some of its most personally significant moments, and the best of them understood that coming back after a long absence means having something to say rather than simply reappearing. Lady A’s On This Winter’s Night Vol. 2 came more than a decade after the original and didn’t play it safe for a moment — “Little Saint Nick” leaned into Beach Boys harmony, “Wonderful Christmastime” went somewhere orchestral and new, and “What Christmas Means To Me” bounded along with a jazzy joy that made December feel like it had truly arrived. Natalie Grant came back after nearly twenty years with one of the season’s most complete albums — “Jingle Bells” and the family-rooted original “Christmas Looks Good on You” sitting naturally alongside the more considered material, the whole record moving through everything Christmas can feel like without losing its footing. Brad Paisley returned after nearly twenty years with original songs that felt earned. Gold City came back after more than two decades, for fans who had all but given up expecting it. When records arrive after absences that long, they carry everything the waiting has built. You can feel it from the first track.
That sense of music meaning more than its surface — more than the notes, more than the occasion — ran through the year’s reissues too, which were some of 2025’s most rewarding listening and came entirely from the past. The Carpenters’ A Christmas Portrait: Legacy Edition opened a window into the making of one of the most beloved Christmas albums ever recorded — the craft behind performances that had always seemed effortless, suddenly visible. Rather than cluttering the original, it made you hear it differently. Verve Remixed Holiday did something bolder, commissioning contemporary producers to reimagine classic recordings — Ella Fitzgerald’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” transformed into contemporary R&B, Billie Holiday’s “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” recast in dancehall — giving familiar music a new life without asking it to pretend to be something it wasn’t. Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas returned as a translucent gold 2LP with six tracks making their vinyl debut for the very first time, presented finally as the document it has always deserved to be. And the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack arrived for its 60th anniversary needing no argument whatsoever. Some Christmas music is simply permanent. The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s score is among the clearest examples of it, and sixty years have done absolutely nothing to change that.
2025 reminded everyone paying attention what Christmas music looks like when artists take it seriously — across a wider range of sounds and intentions than any recent season. The playlist it built will still be getting played in five years. That’s the only measure that matters, and by that measure, it delivered completely.
Stay tuned to Forever Christmas Radio.