The 6 best and 6 worst celebrity Christmas albums

Mariah Carey’s timeless Christmas album features many covers of classics and three original songs. The star, of course, is “All I Want for Christmas is You,” which is so timeless that it hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 a full 25 years after its release, and has continued to top the chart every holiday season since.

“There are the classics — the standards that everybody grew up with — and then there are the reinterpretations or new originals,” Dave Bakula, a senior analyst for Nielsen Music, told The New York Times. “Mariah lives in that sweet spot of both.”

Ariana Grande’s surprise-released Christmas EP experienced a surge in popularity after she added some of the project’s six original songs to her 2019 Sweetener World Tour setlist. That year, it even surpassed “Thank U, Next” as Grande’s most-streamed album.

“my favorite body of work,” she wrote on Twitter. “she is rising from the dead ! thank u new listeners of christmas n chill and hello everyone that is just now discovering it. i’m so happy.”

Grande also praised an analysis of the album by Vulture’s Rachel Handler, who described the collection of songs as “surreal” and “extremely horny.”

“The first thing you need to know about ‘Christmas and Chill’ is that, unlike most celebrity Christmas albums, it contains zero covers. Nay, this is an entirely original work; Grande does not perform a playful riff on ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ because she is too busy staying inside, having tons of unhinged sex to a trap beat,” Handler wrote. 

Michael Bublé’s essential Christmas album is entirely comprised of classic covers, from “Jingle Bells” to “Santa Baby” — but “Christmas” actually benefits from Bublé’s lack of originality. His rich, Rat Pack-worthy voice is perfectly suited to retain the chestnut-roasting, spirit-brightening, holly-jolly magic of the holiday season.

These days, Justin Bieber’s brand may not scream “holiday cheer,” but his 2011 album “Under the Mistletoe” molds the genre to suit his sound.

Anyone who convinced Busta Rhymes to hop on a delightfully unhinged cover of “Drummer Boy” (Bieber’s trap-tinged version features the lyric “Playing for the king, playing for the title / I’m surprised you didn’t hear this in the Bible”) deserves a spot on this list.

John Legend’s aptly titled “A Legendary Christmas” includes eight covers (including his much-debated woke version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Kelly Clarkson) and six jazzy original tracks, which are equal parts endearing and cheesy. (When it comes to holiday music, cheese is the whole point.)

Legend is ideally suited for this kind of project, which would’ve fallen flat without the sincerity that defines his voice and brand. “A Legendary Christmas” was even nominated for best traditional pop vocal album at the 2020 Grammy Awards, alongside other legends like Elvis Costello and Barbra Streisand.

Save for the closing track, “White Xmas,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Fruitcake” is full of original bops, each equally as catchy as the last.

Much like Grande’s EP, “Fruitcake” blends contemporary pop production, wintry innuendos, and Carpenter’s signature wit to great effect: “A Nonsense Christmas” is a festive twist on her viral hit, “Buy Me Presents” is a cheeky ode to Santa as the ideal romantic suitor, while “Cindy Lou Who” stands out as the sole genuine tear-jerker.

Davis Hasselhoff’s Christmas album would be endearing if it had leaned into the weirdness (like, why does this exist?). Instead, it’s just plain bad. As CBC Music put it so elegantly, the “Baywatch” star’s attempt to recreate holiday classics was just “incredibly unnecessary.”

Taylor Swift was still a teenage country darling when she released “The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection” and botched seasonal favorites like “Last Christmas” and “Silent Night.” As Courteney Larocca previously wrote for BI, her “Santa Baby” cover is the EP’s worst offender: “It’s difficult to listen to her croon about how she’s been an ‘awful good girl’ while trying to flirt her way into a light blue convertible without gagging.”

Even though “The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection” features two original songs from this generation’s preeminent lyricist (“Christmases When You Were Mine” and “Christmas Must Be Something More”), neither is executed well enough to rescue the experience.

Seth MacFarlane has a surprisingly robust singing voice, but it’s hard to separate his brand from “Holiday for Swing” — especially if you associate his vocals with Brian, the talking dog from “Family Guy.” The album barely reimagines any of its holiday classics and takes itself way too seriously for MacFarlane’s boyish comedy instincts.

“CeeLo’s Magic Moment” was an obvious extension of CeeLo Green’s rebrand as the family-friendly coach on NBC’s “The Voice,” a much duller version of the iconic Gnarls Barkley singer who once gave us transcendent jazz-pop-funk fusion hits like “Crazy.”

As a result, “CeeLo’s Magic Moment” comes across as forced and contrived. 

Do you remember (or even know) that Sia released a Christmas album within the last decade?

The powerhouse singer tried to infuse a bit of tropical funk into the holiday season with “Everyday is Christmas,” but it just doesn’t work the way she clearly intended. As Katherine St. Asaph wrote for Pitchfork, the album “feels inconsistent and underwritten, like opening a gift where someone’s forgotten to remove the tags.”

Making holiday music is always a bit of a risk; it usually reeks of a cash grab, rather than a serious artistic pursuit. That can be a death knell for pop stars who already have to fight against that anti-artistic stereotype.

Such is the case for Gwen Stefani, who used to make albums like “Return of Saturn” and “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.” but now makes flavorless country-pop about being married.

For many fans, Stefani’s fourth solo album, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” punctuated her unfortunate fall from the cool-girl pedestal. The album bears no hint of personality or idiosyncratic spin — just Stefani delivering the billionth faithful rendition of “Jingle Bells” and dueting with her husband, Blake Shelton, on the cookie-cutter title track.