It’s music for the most wonderful time of the year, even if it always makes you cry.Īnd it never goes away. It evokes a visceral, nearly oppressive sentimentality, one fortified and strengthened by a lifetime’s worth of associated holiday memories - personal, familial, romantic, nostalgic. But when they do connect, it’s magic – not to mention a holly jolly payday.Ĭhristmas music has a wavelength entirely its own, shared by an overwhelming majority of its most recognizable classics: a sublime yearning that’s at once profoundly saddening and deeply comforting. Some succeed, as with these modern Christmas classics others, which just dropped this year, have yet to prove their mistletoe mettle.

And with each passing year, more than a few contemporary artists try their hand at crafting a new seasonal standard, something sweet and melancholy that lingers in the pine-scented air for as long as it takes you to finish a candy cane (without chewing, that is). People have been singing about Christmas almost as long as it’s been celebrated. The things that make Christmas songs great - whether carols, old pop standards or newer enduring hits - are most of the same things that make pop great in general: emotional connection, universal relatability, unshakeable catchiness.

There’s a reason that listeners seem to get more impatient every year for the Christmas music season to start: Nothing else feels quite like it.

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