My Christmas Album of Popular Covers

As someone who has re-recorded hundreds of Christmas albums (so many duplicates!) for my 20-year old Vinyl to CD Conversion business, I've come to recognize the same songs that show up on album after album, year after year, covered by so...many...different musicians. The reasoning maybe the nostalgia trip that we all experience with holiday music, but more importantly, many of those classics are also in the public domain, and artists and composers can use the melody and lyrics at will without having to pay anyone.

Which holiday songs are covered the most?

I subscribe to Chris Dalla Riva's excellent Substack email newsletter 'Can't Get Much Higher', and his music reporting and in-depth analysis is always enlightening week after week. In his Nov. 24, 2024 issue, he linked to a report by Billboard Magazine in 2017 (paywall) where they listed the top 30 holiday songs, but I only needed the top ten by popularity.

  1. “Silent Night” (137,315 recordings)
  2. “White Christmas” (128,276 recordings)
  3. “Jingle Bells” (89,681 recordings)
  4. “The Christmas Song” (80,064 recordings)
  5. “Winter Wonderland” (70,471 recordings)
  6. “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (68,669 recordings)
  7. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (65,377 recordings)
  8. “Joy To The World” (59,767 recordings)
  9. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” (56,552 recordings)
  10. “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (54,446 recordings)

Why Ten Songs?

Basically, it's exactly an album's worth of music, and this will be the track listing of my future Christmas release. If Mariah Carey can do it, why can't I? I'll be the new voice of elevator music worldwide with my delightful gruff covers of the most highly covered Holiday songs! When's this album coming out? You'll need to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow me on BlueSky to find out!