When It Comes to Christmas Music, Young Listeners Love the Classics

As contemporary artists try to capture the Christmas spirit, Spotify finds young listeners are crooning to the classics. The data reflect a gift under the tree for Americans, the kind of shared cultural touchstones that unite us across the lines dividing generations, genres, and even religious beliefs.The president of Integr8 Research, Matt Bailey, writes in a blog post earlier this month that his analysis found “almost two-thirds of the most-played Christmas songs on Spotify are from styles and eras of music that radio abandoned decades ago the rest of the year.”The Top 5 Christmas songs on Spotify for 2022 held their places for the week of Thanksgiving 2023. They are Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” 1958; Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” 1994; Bobby Helms’s “Jingle Bell Rock,” 1957; Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” 1984; and 1963’s “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams.Noting that “Millennials and Gen Zers remain overrepresented among Spotify users,” Mr. Bailey said, “We can learn a lot about how Christmas music is changing by examining their Spotify usage.” Integr8 found that 46 percent of songs celebrating the holiday on Spotify’s Top 200 were “Standards” or modern covers of them.Another 19 percent were in the “Oldies” category, performed by singers such as Elvis Presley and the Ronettes in the 1950s and 1960s. “Classic Hits,” by artists such as the Jackson 5, Eagles, and Paul McCartney accounted for another 16 percent.Songs from the 1990s made up just nine percent of the streams. The “Millennial” category wasn’t much larger at 12 percent and was dominated by songs in the classic style like “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and Kelly Clarkson’s long list of tinsel-time hits.While Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, it’s secular songs that dominate on Spotify. “The songs that enjoy the broadest appeal among the younger user base for” the streaming service, Mr. Bailey wrote, “are songs evoking the spirit of the season, not the religious significance of the holiday.”Mr. Bailey assured Christian listeners that they’ll still hear “Little Drummer Boy,” “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem,” “The First Noel,” and “Silent Night” on the radio. “However,” he said, “no versions of these classic carols are among the 80 holiday titles that made the Spotify Top 200 last year.”Of the 81 Christmas songs in the Top 200 in 2022, only three feature the nativity. “Joy to the World” by Nat King Cole is joined by Bing Crosby’s “Do You Hear What I Hear” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” from 1960, 1962, and 1942 respectively.Analyzing the Top 200 weekly streams on Spotify’s charts, Integr8 found that at the yuletide season’s peak, 80 percent of the Top 200 tunes were Christmas songs, including nine of the Top 10. The overall picture is the opposite of what the conventional wisdom predicted as listeners aged.“A decade ago,” Mr. Bailey wrote, “a popular meme highlighted how the 20 most-played Christmas songs on the radio were primarily a snapshot of the songs Baby Boomers heard on the radio when they were grade-schoolers.”Back then, data rated “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Jingle Bell Rock” as the most-played songs. In third place, there was a tie: Gene Autry’s “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from 1949 and, from 1957, Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas.”“Music nerds pontificated,” Mr. Bailey wrote, “that those Boomer childhood chestnuts would eventually fade away as younger generations sought to recreate their own childhood Christmas soundtracks.” That future is now, but the likes of Bing, Elvis, and Williams endure.Despite changing times, the traditional family Christmas albums abide. “As Boomer parents played those songs for their own families,” Mr. Bailey wrote, “their kids grew to think of Bing Crosby and Brenda Lee as Christmas music artists, not one-time Pop superstars who also recorded Christmas songs.”Mr. Bailey said of young listeners, “The appetite for Andy Williams is much stronger than for Ariana Grande.” At least that’s the case at Christmastime, when young and old, believer and non-believer alike, can rock around the Christmas tree together and have a happy holiday.___________Correction: The song “Last Christmas” is performed by Wham! An earlier edition misstated the performer’s name.

When It Comes to Christmas Music, Young Listeners Love the Classics

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