Merry Halloween: A Scarily Early Guide To This Year’s New Christmas Albums

It happens every year: Before spooky season even really gets rolling, musical artists start announcing new Christmas albums. If you're the type of person who despises Christmas music, the early onset yuletide onslaught might fill you with terror, which makes it a perfectly perverse annual Halloween-week feature here at Stereogum. Here is this year's potentially frightening holiday rundown.Sufjan Stevens' Worst Chrismas Ever!Let's start with the album Stereogum's indie-leaning listeners are most likely to care about. The new comp Worst Christmas Ever! brings together the best of Sufjan Stevens' myriad Christmas releases onto one disc. The 16-song tracklist includes one new song, "On This Christmas (It Only Gets Better)." It's Stevens' first new holiday tune in 15 years and first new song of any kind since recovering from Guillain-Barré syndrome. [Out 11/6 on Asthmatic Kitty.]Alanis Morissette's Good Weather For Immaculate ConceptionFor several years now, Alanis Morissette has been releasing new holiday songs every time the season rolls around. Her first Christmas album, the cheekily titled Good Weather For Immaculate Conception, combines those tracks with new recordings. Guests include 2/3 of the Only Murders In The Building cast (sorry Selenators, it's Steve Martin and Martin Short), Brandi Carlile, Joy Oladokun, Amythyst Kiah, and Trans Voices. Morissette teased the album with a version of the bluegrass Christmas traditional "Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem" featuring Carlile and banjo enthusiast Martin. [Out 11/6 on Epiphany Music.]The Cast Of The Gilded Age's Voices Of The Gilded Age: The Christmas AlbumHere's what I know about HBO's The Gilded Age: It's set in 1880s New York City, it was created by Downtown Abbey's Julian Fellowes, and the GOAT Carrie Coon is in it. The show is not a musical, but its cast is full of Broadway veterans, and apparently some fans have clamored for a musical episode. The next best thing: a Christmas album on which the actors perform a slew of holiday standards, plus two new tunes composed by veteran hitmaker Desmond Child. Coon plus castmates Ben Ahlers, Christine Baranski, Laura Benanti, Denée Benton, Jordan Donica, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Donna Murphy, Kelli O’Hara, Taylor Richardson, Morgan Spector, Taylor Trensch, and Adrienne Warren all sing on the album, and the results sound way more 20th century than 19th century to me. [Out 11/6 via Concord Theatricals.]Niia's Christmas With NiiaAlt-R&B singer Niia's new Christmas With Niia is a new entry in the canon of jazzy, self-consciously "cozy" Christmas albums. She worked on it with producer Spencer Zahn, which should immediately perk your ears up. The lead single was a cover of Paul McCartney's divisive "Wonderful Christmastime" that replaces the original version's playful quirkiness with a wistful smoothness that's really working for me. This one might end up in my holiday rotation. [Out digitally 10/30 and physically 12/4 via Candid Records.]Ryan Peter Murphy's Christmas In New EnglandThere will always be a market for Michael Bublé types. Ryan Peter Murphy is a 24-year-old Connecticut-born Berklee student who bills himself as a "swooner" ("Gen Z’s answer to the crooner," explains a press release). That makes him a prime candidate to record a Christmas album, and so he has. Unlike fellow young traditionalist Laufey, Murphy is not putting any kind of nouveau twist on his trad-pop pastiches. Songs from his new Christmas In New England are even being featured in the new crop of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies this year, so I'd guess his appeal is multi-generational. The only modern aspect of Christmas In New England's title track is an animated video that looks like AI. [Out now on Warner.]aron!'s christmas dream EPThere's more than one of these young crooner guys. You can tell aron! is Gen Z because he insists upon lowercase branding, but like Ryan Peter Murphy, his self-described "cozy pop" (yes, this kid keeps it cozy all year long) is all the way retro. That means he, too, is ideally suited for a project like the forthcoming christmas dream EP. He delivers the snappy big band single "Christmas Dreams" with a surprisingly casual swagger. [Out 11/13 via Verve.]Hilary Duff's Holiday Things EPFamous millennial mom and resurgent Ladder spokesperson Hilary Duff got into the Christmas music game with this month's Holiday Things EP, a mix of three originals and two covers that strikes me as one of the best pop yuletide efforts since Ariana Grande's Christmas & Chill. It opens with the brilliantly titled "All You Want For Christmas Is Me." [Out now via Sugarmouse/Atlantic.]Steven Page's Steven's GreetingsIn 2004, when Steven Page was still in the Barenaked Ladies, he and his bandmates released a Christmas album called Barenaked For The Holidays. He left the band in 2009, and after years of solo releases, he's made his way back to yuletide fare. Next month's Steven's Greetings features a mix of originals and standards, including a few of the songs he sang on Barenaked For The Holidays. There are a couple Hanukkah tunes mixed in too. The album spans the jokey-to-heartfelt emotional range we've come to expect from this guy; it begins with Page passionately singing "I'm gonna make a cheese log with cream cheese and cheddar cheese" and ends with a straight-faced rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" featuring his three adult sons. [Out 11/13 via Fresh Baked Goods.]The Infamous Stringdusters' Dust The Halls Vol. 2Progressive bluegrass mainstays the Infamous Stringdusters put out Dust The Halls: An Acoustic Christmas Holiday! back in 2020. The sequel, Dust The Halls Vol. 2, puts a rustic spin on the expected mix of hymns, standards, and originals. [Out 11/13 via Americana Vibes.]Kat Edmonson's Have Your Merry Christmas With MeJazz-pop singer Kat Edmonson is no stranger to holiday music. She appeared on Lyle Lovett's Songs For The Season in 2011 and released her own Holiday Swingin'! (A Kat Edmonson Christmas, Vol. 1) in 2021. Now comes another similar offering, Have Your Merry Christmas With Me. Based on advance singles "It's Snowing" and "That's What I Want For Christmas," the originals will successfully capture the jazzy traditional essence of the covers. [Out 11/6 via self-release.]Debbie Gibson's Winterlicious D’LuxeFormer teen idol Debbie Gibson successfully ventured into the holiday realm with 2022's Winterlicious. Ahead of a Christmas-themed Las Vegas residency this December, she recently dropped a deluxe edition of the album with six new tracks including "Lit Up," a single that reminds me this woman paved the way for Britney Spears. [Out now via Stargirl.]David Benoit's David Benoit Conducts A Vince Guaraldi Holiday SymphonyI don't know why you would listen to Vince Guaraldi covers when the originals are right there, but if you're looking for a fresh spin on Guaraldi's timeless material from A Charlie Brown Christmas, David Benoit has got you covered. The jazz pianist and composer worked with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra on David Benoit Conducts A Vince Guaraldi Holiday Symphony. On lead single "Christmas Time Is Here," they get an assist from the All-American Boys Choir. [Out digitally 10/30 and physically 11/20 via Candid.]Norah Jones & Chris Stapleton's “April’s Gone"As Christmas trifles go, you could do a lot worse than a rootsy one-off single from Norah Jones and Chris Stapleton. Jones wrote "April's Gone" with Leon Michels of El Michels Affair, who produced her 2021 holiday album I Dream Of Christmas and 2024's Visions. The new track isn't going to end these performers' reputation as Starbucks music, but it would sound great at a coffee shop.Johan Agebjörn & Dana Jean Phoenix - "Will You Be Home For Christmas"On the new single "Will You Be Home For Christmas," Swedish producer Johan Agebjörn and synthwave singer-songwriter Dana Jean Phoenix dare to imagine a Drive soundtrack version of Christmas music. It ends up somewhere a bit chintzier than that, but good try! [Out 11/27 via self-release.]