::start transcript::

Well, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and welcome to a special edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi.

Usually on this show, we unpack a year in Pop history and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive rankings based on the weekly charts published in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. Well this week it’s still a top ten countdown, and it’s still based on Billboard‘s charts, but instead of a year, we’re zeroing in on Christmas music.

Now since 2017, at least one Christmas song has made the top ten on the Hot100 over the holidays, and every year since 2019, a Christmas song has topped the chart for multiple weeks. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” doing most of the heavy lifting there. But the real milestone came in 2024, when—for the first time ever—the entire top ten for a week was wall-to-wall Christmas. You had to scroll all the way down to #17 to find a track that wasn’t about sleigh bells, snowmen, or nostalgic pining.

So Christmas music: never bigger on the charts, and it’d be real easy to conclude from that that people are listening to more of it than ever before around the holidays. But not so fast. What’s changed is how listening gets counted. Once upon a time, a song needed a purchase or radio spin to move the needle, but not anymore. Now, every time someone hits “play” on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube—anywhere, it counts. And that has completely reshaped the charts in what us Chart Geeks like to call the “streaming era,” which began in 2012 when Billboard added on-demand streams to its Hot100 formula.

By 2016, streaming had passed 50% of music-industry revenue; as of mid-2025, per the RIAA, it’s at 84%. Now imagine if in the vinyl, cassette, CD or even download eras, records got chart juice not just when someone bought them or a DJ played them on radio, but every time someone dropped a needle and listened. Records would’ve stayed on the charts a lot longer. Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” for example, finally fell off the Hot100 this past October after 112 weeks—that’s over two years.

Through the ’60s and well into the ’70s, the all-time record for chart longevity was just 27 weeks. And of course, back then there was no way to know what people were spinning at home—especially records dragged out once a year while decorating the tree.

Well now we do know! And at Christmas, it’s mostly older stuff. Of those ten songs that monopolized the top ten over the holidays in 2024, only two came out after the iPhone. One was from the ’90s—Mariah; one was ’80s—Wham!’s “Last Christmas;” and Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” was Early ’70s, but half the songs were straight from the Eisenhower Era back to the Postwar Crooner boom: Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms, Nat King Cole—”rockin’,” “jinglin’,” “chestnuts roastin’.”

And that tracks across the entire streaming era: at Christmas, folks want the classics. And why wouldn’t they? Mid-century Pop was built for coziness and warmth—lush strings, big choruses, elegant arrangements—and Singers whose whole job was to make you feel like they’re your old friend—not just at Christmas, but year-round.

But now that streaming gives Christmas songs a clear shot at the Hot100, today’s Stars are stepping up too, trying to bottle some holiday magic of their own. And that’s the focus of our special Chartcrush Christmas countdown. Yes, we’ve crunched the numbers—2012 to just last year—and this hour we’ll be counting down the top ten charting Christmas songs of the streaming era, released in the streaming era.

The New Christmas Classics, made by and for the Millennials and Z-ers who, for a solid six or seven weeks every Winter, have been gleefully shrugging off the counterculture cool of their Boomer and Gen-X parents that all but banished earnest Christmas music from the mainstream in the ’70s, and embracing Christmas with both arms and a big smile. So let’s dive right in!

#10 Dan + Shay – Pick Out a Christmas Tree (2021)

At #10, two guys who met at a house party in 2012, busted out the guitars to jam, and soon had a deal with one of Nashville’s top Publishers. Their first record “19 You + Me” was the most added debut by a Duo ever on country radio, and critics praised its “warm details” and “emotion,” the very qualities that make for a great Christmas record. So in 2020 they started putting out Christmas singles every year, and this one—an Amazon Music exclusive—was their biggest in 2021. At #10, Dan + Shay’s “Pick Out a Christmas Tree.”

Dan + Shay, “Pick Out a Christmas Tree” at #10 on our special Chartcrush Countdown of the top ten New Christmas Classics: Christmas records released in the streaming era. 2021, the only year it’s charted so far, but it stayed on the chart five weeks, enough to get it in to the countdown. Dan + Shay have charted 17 hits on the Hot100 since their 2014 debut including their top5 with Justin Bieber, “10,000 Hours,” in 2019—which at the time—was the first Country song to debut in the top ten since 2012.

Now despite their success with Christmas music, Dan + Shay held off releasing a full Christmas album for a full ten years. Their double-set It’s Officially Christmas dropped just after they performed the title song from the Hallmark Channel’s float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in 2024.

#9 Taylor Swift – Christmas Tree Farm (2019)

Next, the 2020s biggest Pop star so far on the charts—and #2 for the 2010’s decade behind only Drake. Surprisingly it’s her only charting Christmas hit, and just as surprisingly, it too only charted the year it came out, 2019. Well, actually not really. In 2021 she put out a different version of the song, the so-called “Old Timey Version,” and that did even better—on the charts for five weeks, but again, only that year, 2021.

Now since Billboard combines different versions (or remixes) of songs for ranking, that’s what we’ve done: combined the points for both versions. Only then does it make the top ten in our ranking of streaming era Christmas hits. At #9, here’s the original 2019 Pop version of Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm.”

“Christmas Tree Farm,” Taylor Swift at #9 on our special Chartcrush Christmas Special: the Top Ten Christmas hits of the streaming era released in the streaming era. Of course, the continued dominance of old timey Christmas classics at holiday time: why it made sense for Taylor Swift to (ahem) “update” the song in 2021 with her “Old Timey Version” recorded with a 70-piece studio orchestra, more mature vocals and string swells and horns aplenty throughout. The original we just heard is contemporary upbeat Pop with synthesizers and backing vocals that Taylor wrote, recorded, and produced in about 48 hours.

#8 Pentatonix – Hallelujah (2016)

At #8, it’s an a capella Act that unlike Ms. Swift barely dented charts until they started doing Christmas music—their 2014 third long-player That’s Christmas to Me, their first to chart besides their early EPs. And it made it all the way to #2 on the album chart, followed by six more holiday albums since. And of their six charting hits on the Hot100, five have been Christmas songs, the biggest of which spent 11 weeks on the chart over the holidays in 2016: an exceptionally long chart run for a holiday hit. Explanation for that after the song. At #8 it’s Pentatonix’s a capella rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Canadian Songwriter Leonard Cohen took five years to complete his song “Hallelujah,” which first appeared (to little notice) on his 1984 album. Then Velvet Underground alum John Cale did it for a Cohen appreciation album in 1991 and his version? Included in its entirety in the movie blockbuster Shrek—the scene after Shrek parts ways with Donkey.

Well since then, the song has become a modern standard with over 700 versions and counting—seven of which have charted on the Hot100, including Cohen’s own for a week when news of his death at 82 hit in 2016. But just one week before that, the Pentatonix a capella version we just heard debuted on the Hot100, and then it stayed 11 weeks through the holiday season: the lead single off their second full-length Christmas album, A Pentatonix Christmas.

Now Cohen’s lyrics aren’t about Christmas, yet “Hallelujah” was already considered a Christmas song thanks to British Singer Susan Boyle doing it for her 2010 Christmas album, and Christian Rock Band Cloverton’s version with new lyrics about the birth of Jesus, from 2012.

#7 Michael Bublé – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (2011)

Next at #7 as we count down the top ten Christmas songs of the streaming era released in the streaming era, 2012 to now, the first of two songs in our top ten by the only Act who has more than one. Both are familiar Christmas standards, but no version of this one up next made the Hot100 until the streaming era despite being on Christmas albums by Sinatra, Carpenters, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston and many others—not to mention the original sung by none other than Judy Garland. This one, though, has charted every Christmas since 2020. It’s Michael Bublé’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” written for MGM’s Technicolor extravaganza Meet Me in St. Louis during the dark days of World War 2 in 1943 when victory was anything but assured, and co-writer Hugh Martin’s less-than-optimistic original lyrics have needed a couple tweaks over the years.

Judy Garland thought the five-year-old girl she’d be singing it to in the film would cry if the first line was “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last,” so the line became “Let your heart be light.” Then in 1957, the War long over, Frank Sinatra working on his album A Jolly Christmas got Martin to replace the not-very-jolly line about muddling through somehow (which is in the film) to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”

And those changes stuck. Outside of a handful of lesser-known Indie Acts on YouTube, all the post-Sinatra versions including Michael Bublé’s we just heard have the happier revised lyrics.

#6 Justin Bieber – Mistletoe (2011)

Mistletoe is a firmly established trope in the canon of popular Christmas songs, mentioned in “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” But in 2011 it got its own Christmas hit.

Having just graduated from his signature sideswept bangs look, our Teen Pop Idol at #6 dropped his second album: a Christmas album—Under the Mistletoe. And its lead single debuted on the Hot100 at #11, which was the highest debut for a Christmas song in Hot100 history up ’til then. At #6 on our special Chartcrush Countdown of the top ten new Christmas classics released in the streaming era, it’s Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe.”

Three covers of Christmas standards from Justin Bieber’s Under the Mistletoe album also charted at Christmas in 2011, and in 2020 after a decade of Pop megastardom, his version of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” also dented the charts, but “Mistletoe” from 2011: to date Bieber’s only Christmas record to return to the charts in multiple years, which it has at Christmas in 2021, ’23, ’24 and now ’25 as well.

#5 Ed Sheeran and Elton John – Merry Christmas (2021)

Well we’re counting down the top ten Christmas hits of the streaming era—records from the 2010s onward, recorded and released in the streaming era—the new would-be classics, here on a special Christmas edition of Chartcrush.

At #5 we have the only duet in the countdown: two of Britain’s biggest Pop exports since The Beatles and Stones. It debuted at #1 in the U.K. upon its release in 2021. Here in the States it only managed a modest #55 on the Hot100, but it’s returned to the charts every Christmas since. Written during a pandemic-era songwriting huddle, it also holds the distinction of having one of the most straightforward titles in the Christmas Pop canon. At #5: Ed Sheeran and Elton John, “Merry Christmas.”

At the top of the show I mentioned the Baby Boom generation’s countercultural allergy to traditional Christmas music—an attitude that all but shoved the old standards out of the mainstream by the mid-’70s. Billboard even discontinued its annual “Best Bets for Christmas” holiday chart after the 1973 season, but one last hit slipped through, and that was Elton John’s “Step into Christmas.” Elton at the time, still riding the Early ’70s Nostalgia wave that’d made his ’50s throwback “Crocodile Rock” his first U.S. chart-topper earlier in the year.

After 1973, though, “Step into Christmas” quietly faded—until the streaming era, when it came roaring back. In 2020, it logged seven weeks on the U.K. chart, three of them in the top ten, and Boomer Elton, channeling his still impeccable commercial instincts, called his protégé, Millennial Ed Sheeran, and together they wrote and recorded “Merry Christmas.”

Now it wasn’t the first time Artists from twice-removed generations teamed up to bridge the holiday gap. In 1977, David Bowie appeared on Bing Crosby’s Merrie Old Christmas TV special for their counterpoint Duet “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy,” widely described as “surreal” at the time, but the first real thaw in Christmas music’s generational freeze, especially after its release as a single five years later in ’82.

#4 Jonas Brothers – Like It’s Christmas (2019)

At #4, the first Hot100 charting Christmas song by a Group that’s been releasing Christmas singles for over 15 years. Possibly related: it’s also their first Christmas single with a title that sounds like it’s a Christmas single. Their previous non-charting Christmas singles: “Girl of My Dreams” in 2007, “Joyful Kings” in ’08, and “Summertime Anthem” in ’09.

And definitely related: when this song arrived just before Christmas in 2019, the group was coming off a 92-date reunion tour after six years on hiatus—and their very first #1 hit, “Sucker,” which logged 22 weeks in the top ten (our Chartcrush #10 song of 2019). So of course their Christmas song in 2019 was their first charting Christmas hit!

But then at Christmas in 2023, it re-entered the chart. Then again in ’24 and yet again in ’25—all the makings of a budding new Christmas perennial. At #4 it’s The Jonas Brothers with “Like It’s Christmas.”

Jonas Brothers, “Like It’s Christmas,” less a novelty than a year-round Jonas Brothers Pop single that just happens to wear a Santa hat: midtempo, polished, relationship-focused—cozy but not kitschy. And the song’s repeated holiday chart returns have quietly turned it into a modern Christmas perennial.

This year it gets another boost, featured in the Disney+ musical comedy A Very Jonas Christmas Movie and closing out its soundtrack—which frames it as tradition, not trend. Because at Christmas, Pop has a long memory. There are no has-beens—just comforting voices that never feel worn out, and that people are happy to welcome back every year like old friends.

#3 Michael Bublé – It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (2011)

And sometimes at Christmas, it’s less about the Singer than the song—why so many holiday records get re-recorded, reissued, re-adopted. Like our song at #3, a standard, but since 2020, one with old and new versions dueling it out on the charts at Christmas time.

Perry Como’s from 1951 with The Fontane Sisters had the field all to itself in 2018, did even better in 2019, and in 2020, got all the way to #12—but since then, a newer version has steadily gained ground and as of last year, it’s overtaken Como’s to become the first modern recording of a Christmas standard to out-chart the original.

No small feat, dislodging Perry Como—a multi-generational holiday institution who hosted a must-see Christmas TV special every year from 1948 to 1994 and whose version of the song is in Robert Zemeckis’ neo-holiday classic The Polar Express.

Plenty of Artists have tried to update Christmas standards. Only one has succeeded. At #3, it’s the new go-to version of the song by twice-Oscar-nominated Music Man composer Meredith Wilson: Michael Bublé’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas.”

Michael Bublé, the only Act with two songs in our Chartcrush Countdown of the top-Hot100-charting new Christmas hits of the streaming era, and both are updates of Christmas standards. We heard his “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” back at #7—the only charting version ever of that one. And here at #3, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas,” now the dominant version of the standard, out-charting Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters’ from 1951 for a second straight year.

And that’s no accident: Bublé has been cultivating his neo-Crooner style and image since his major label debut over 20 years ago in 2003—including early Christmas releases like “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting),” a #6 Adult Contemporary hit off his Christmas EP Let It Snow later that year. So by the time his first full-length Christmas album arrived in 2011—simply titled Christmas—the handoff felt totally natural, and the album has returned to the top ten on the album chart every holiday season since.

#2 Ariana Grande – Santa Tell Me (2014)

Well as we heard on The Jonas Brothers “Like It’s Christmas” at #4, a modern holiday classic doesn’t actually have to be about Christmas. Sometimes Christmas is just the setting—the backdrop for a relationship story that could happen any time of the year. That’s nothing new. Wham’s “Last Christmas” is actually a breakup song and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is really just a love song, albeit one with a seasonal deadline! And even back to the classic era—standards like “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” “Let It Snow,” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm“—Winter, doing the heavy lifting in those, not Christmas.

Nothing new, exactly—but looking at the charts in the streaming era, what is new is how dominant these Christmas-as-setting songs have become. Not just among new releases, but among the classics that keep returning every December. And the top two in our countdown of the new Christmas Classics? Both cases in point. At #2, it’s the first holiday hit released in the 21st century to crack the top ten on the Hot100, and the only one to date to crack the top five. It’s Ariana Grande with “Santa Tell Me.”

2014 was Ariana Grande’s breakthrough year—in the top ten continuously from mid-May all the way to the end of the year with her string of four hits: “Problem” featuring Rapper Iggy Azalea, then “Break Free” and her feature on Jessie J’s “Bang Bang,” and finally “Love Me Harder” in December. “Tell Me Santa,” the holiday capper.

It didn’t return to the charts until 2020, but once it did, it kept peaking higher every year until 2024 when, again, it was the first holiday song released in this century to crack the top five.

For Christmas 2015 she unleashed her second Christmas EP Christmas & Chill with a “naughty version” of “Tell Me Santa” that’s nearly identical to the original, save a couple not-too-over-the-top lines in the bridge.

#1 Kelly Clarkson – Underneath the Tree (2013)

And that gets us to #1 in our special Chartcrush countdown of the biggest holiday hits of the streaming era released in the streaming era—a song hailed as a new Christmas classic right from the get go, 2013, when it dropped as the lead single from the Singer’s sixth album Wrapped in Red, which as you might’ve guessed, was a Christmas album.

“On par with ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,'” crowed MTV’s Jenna Hally Rubenstein; “already practically a Christmas standard,” declared Idolator‘s Carl Williott. Well it took five years, but in 2018 the charts proved them right when it re-entered for a second holiday run, then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. And in 2024, an eighth, when it cracked the top ten the same week as Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me”—the first top ten Christmas songs that were recorded and released in the 21st century.

Ariana moved up to #5 the next week; this one didn’t, but it had a two-year head start as a holiday chart re-entry, so at #1, it’s Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree.”

Now by the time “Underneath the Tree” cracked the top ten in its eighth holiday chart run, American Idol‘s season one winner, multi-platinum hitmaker, Grammy winner Kelly Clarkson—just as likely to be recognized as an Emmy-winning daytime TV host as a Pop Star. Her last non-holiday top ten on the Hot 100? “Piece by Piece” in 2016; her last #1? “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You),” back in 2011.

But the charts at Christmas don’t work like the rest of the year. There’s no sell-by date—if anything it’s the exact opposite. At Christmas, age, legacy, and familiarity—not liabilities; they’re the whole point.

The songs and performances that last are the ones that seem like they’ve always been there, even if they haven’t been. And that’s the real story of the evolving Christmas canon: records that earn their place slowly, year after year, until the first bars from the speakers after Thanksgiving give you the same feeling as your favorite uncle or friend’s distinctive knock on the front door. And while mid-century favorites still overwhelmingly dominate at holiday time, as you’ve heard this hour, today’s stars are hard at work trying to crack that code.

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed our special Chartcrush countdown of the top ten New Christmas Classics—holiday songs recorded and released in the streaming era. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Thanks for listening, and the happiest of holidays to you and yours!

Over on our website at chartcrush.com there’s a written transcript of, not just the show you just heard, but all our episodes, each counting down the top ten hits from a different year, 1940s to now, plus links to stream podcast versions and other fun and informative goodies. Again, that website: chartcrush.com, I hope you’ll visit. And I hope you’ll tune in again next week, same station and time, for another edition of Chartcrush. Merry Christmas, folks!

::end transcript::