Archives November 2023

Latest information on Songs and Carols including writers, year written and most notable versions by different music artists..

Diana Krall
Diana Krall’s smoky voice is perfect for turning any Christmas carol into a romantic serenade. The jazz star’s first Christmas EP was followed up a few years later with a sultry full-length holiday album.

Destiny’s Child
Destiny’s Child followed in the footsteps of great soul artists like The Temptations and The Supremes when they released their one and only Christmas album in 2001. The girls put their unique stamp all over the holiday tracks they covered, renaming tracks, rewriting harmonies and even using the track Platinum Bells to spruke their range of manufactured dolls.

David Foster
Producer David Foster is best known in association with the artists he has worked with: a who’s who of contemporary music including Michael Buble, Celine Dion, Josh Groban and Michael Jackson. As well as advancing the careers of others however, Foster has also made a name for himself as a songwriter, composer, arranger and pianist. Among more than twenty albums of his own work is David Foster’s Christmas Album, a unique collection of instrumental arrangements and visits from guest vocalists.

David Archuleta
David Archuleta is yet another young singer thrown into the public eye by an appearance on American Idol. Like so many of his co-stars, Archuleta turned his talents to holiday cheer, releasing his first Christmas album in 2009.

Dave Barnes
Despite being born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, the music of Christian rock artist Dave Barnes is free of banjos and twanging western riffs. The vocalist and guitarist instead produces a brand of rock flavoured with blues and R&B influences. As a writer and performer of Christian music, a yuletide album is almost mandatory! Dave Barnes released his obligatory holiday collection in November 2010.

Darius Rucker
Former lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish, Darius Rucker emerged as a solo country star in 2008. It didn’t take long for him to get into the Christmas spirit, contributing a cover of Winter Wonderland to the 2009 album Country for Christmas. This was quickly followed up by Rucker’s own original carol, Candy Cane Christmas.

Connie Talbot
Pint sized singer Connie Talbot shot to fame when she appeared on Britain’s Got Talent in 2007. Her pure, bell-like voice and childhood innocence makes her a perfect candidate for Christmas music, with holiday themed albums making up a large proportion of her output.

Coldplay
With a deep and almost meditative musical style, any Christmas offering from British group Coldplay was bound to be something special. Though the band is yet to release a full length holiday album, their first seasonal single left many fans wishing for more Coldplay yuletide music under their Christmas tree.

Most people agree that there is something special about Christmas music. Perhaps it’s the feel-good spirit, the abundant joy inherent in its melodic patterns or its ability to bring a smile to even the crankiest of curmudgeons. Christmas songs and carols are amongst the most recognised pieces of music, not surprising really given that they are on radio stations and in every public place you can think of for nearly a quarter of the year. A true sense of Christmas music’s popularity can be illustrated by the fact that Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ was, until recently, the best selling record of all time.

Although hymns about Christmas are known to have existed in Roman Times it wasn’t until the 13th century, around the time of St Francis of Assisi, that songs celebrating the birth of Jesus became popular. It would be a few centuries later before many of the songs we still cherish today like ‘The First Noel’ and ‘Hark The Herald Angels Sing’ would arrive (both appeared in print for the first time in 1833) with the formalised practise of singing Christmas carols in churches starting in England in 1880.

The purpose of our website is to comprehensively catalogue every song that was ever written about the season of goodwill. So while we’ll focus in on secular standards such as Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ and well known carols like ‘Away In A Manger’ we’ll also focus on those compositions that have been lost to the mists of Christmastime. Not only that but you will also find details on the numerous covers that have been recorded for individual songs; like ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ which seems to be adopted by a different artist each new December.

Christmas-songs.net is not only text and information though as nearly every page on our website includes at least one music video. Our jukebox feature takes this one step further by aggregating all of the videos across the site onto one page. We will be introducing more and more features as we near our favourite season of the year so make sure you drop back regularly.

Given that every year brings a plethora of new festive records this website will be forever in a state of work in progress. We understand that we’ll miss important recordings along the way so we’d love you to get involved by letting us know about your undiscovered gems.