Look, absolutely no disrespect to Wham! here, but there's only so many times that Last Christmas can be played on repeat before it starts to sound like a cry for help. Or, alternatively, you might be taking part in Whamageddon, and thus abstaining for personal reasons.
If you're in need of a break from the usual suspects – Slade, Wizzard, and the patron Saint of Christmas herself, Mariah Carey – never fear, we have your backs. From frosty Christmas numbers by Kate Bush to Vampire Weekend's spin on a seasonal single, there's something alternative here for everyone, as chosen by the Standard team.
Low - Just Like Christmas
Everyone's favourite indie band from Duluth Minnesota were never meant to make a Christmas record, but then they did, a slowcore classic that is so swamped in jingle bells it sounds as though it was produced by Phil Spector. The song is a road trip of sorts, heartbreaking and soulful in one fell swoop, a record to play as the snow begins to fall as you're driving into the mountains, and the past reappears like an injured moose. Dylan Jones
Mazzy Star - Flowers in December
Festive cheer? Making merriment? Soppy and slightly uncomfortable displays of PDA under the mistletoe? Pah, forget about it, and wallow in some icy yearning instead. The title track of the US dream pop band Mazzy Star’s third album Among My Swan, this is just about as miserable as it gets, charting the slow, trudging failure of a relationship and the last ditch efforts to remember the love that first stoked it.
“Send me your flowers of your December, send me your dreams of your candy wine,” sings Hope Sandoval, “I got just one thing I can't give you, just one more thing of mine.” El Hunt
Phoebe Bridgers - 7 O’Clock News / Silent Night
Indie darling Bridgers has gone from being the last person you might tip to release a Christmas album to making her offerings (gifts?) a yearly tradition. Her 2020 EP, If We Make it Through December features her own haunting take on a carol, which is interspersed with a news bulletin about Roe V Wade in Trump's America. If Silent Night has been sung to death over the years, then maybe this version is its funeral march. Best of all, it features Fiona Apple and The National's Matt Berninger. Merry Christmas! William Mata
Münchener Freiheit - Keeping The Dream Alive
On the face of it this has very little to recommend it: German 80s plastic pop that is so desperately trying to be Paul McCartney even the great man might have thought, “Mmm, maybe this is too sentimental”. A sleeper UK hit in 1988 (when German names still carried a whiff of post-war suspicion, so Münchener Freiheit became simply Freiheit) it managed to combine Mull of Kintyre, The Frog Chorus and Pipes of Peace into a moving hymn for the end-of-year reflection and hope. And I absolutely mean that in a good way. George Chesterton
Khruangbin - A Calf Born in Winter
No refrains about silent nights, or Santa here – as there are zero lyrics. Though festive points are given for the word 'winter' being in the title, and 'calf' (there had to be a young cow present at the birth of JC, right?). And there are bells, no less. It's also an incredibly calming, atmospheric gem from the Texan trio. Who doesn't need a bit of calm during the pandemonium of a family Christmas? Hayley Spencer
Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
Christmas always has a touch of melancholy but country music legend Merle Haggard empties a whole Santa’s sledge worth of it onto this festive ditty. Clocking in at under three minutes, the lyrics are full-on misery from the American heartland as Haggard recites how getting “laid off down at the factory” means telling his daughter “Daddy can’t afford no Christmas here”. Best listened to with a stiff drink in hand. Robert Dex
Slow Club - Christmas TV
We wish you an indie Christmas... This song from the Sheffield duo of Charles Watson and Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem) about two lonely hearts who are far apart at Christmas and yearning to slump in front of the TV together: Over simple accoustic guitar, they talk about the ups and downs, the arguments and scars, the fears that it might not work out, but most of all the hope. It finishes on the yearning, "Just come on home," a refrain that repeats again and again, softly at first and then building into a joyous duet. Come on home and stick on the Christmas telly. Lovely. Nick Clark
Vampire Weekend - Horchata
“In December, drinking horchata, I'd look psychotic in a balaclava…” begins Ezra Koenig, opening Vampire Weekend’s Contra album. It’s not exactly a Christmas song but its lyrics are something of an ode to the colder months and delivered rapidly over a quirky beat to give this a spicy, cosy feel that make it a perfect start to a hipster Christmas party playlist. WM
Julian Casablancas - I Wish It Was Christmas Today
Whatever your feelings about Christmas, ‘cool’ would never be an adjective to describe it. But for anyone of a certain age around the turn of the millennium, The Strokes were coolness personified, so if a Christmas song has Julian Casablancas’ distorted vocals on it, who am I to argue? Not only a Christmas song, but a novelty song – originating from a Saturday Night Live skit – at that. In full Ramones three-chord punk style, this is more Last Nite than Silent Night. Andy Beill
Run D.M.C - Christmas in Hollis
Sampling a whole bunch of classic Christmas songs, it’s no wonder that Run DMC’s Christmas in Hollis is a winner: those parping horn stabs come from Clarence Carter’s 1968 novelty festive funk track Back Door Santa, while a particularly chaotic segment later on crams in Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells, and Joy to the World in rapid succession. On this jolly festive ode to their hometown of Hollis, Queens, the hip-hop group detail a brief encounter with Santa in a deserted park; though they initially mistake him for a late-night dog walker, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s walking around with Rudolph on a leash.
After the mystery man rapidly flees the scene, Run finds an abandoned wallet containing one million dollars; “when I got home I bugged, cause under the tree, was a letter from Santa and the dough was for me”. The best, most boozy Christmas ever ensues. EH
Jimmy Eat World - Littlething
Consider it clutching at straws to add something emo-ey to a playlist, Littlething does at least reference Christmas Eve in its opening lines. Somehow both insecure and anthemic, it follows a narrator considering if he can overlook an alarming number of red flags in his relationship. Jimmy Eat World have also covered Last Christmas, but Littlething is a more honest account and, at a squint, the xylophone effect that runs over the chorus could sound ever so slightly festive. WM
Kate Bush - December Will Be Magic Again
It’s Christmas, but done by Kate Bush: so of course this has got Oscar Wilde, snow blanketing sleeping lovers, and a parachutist descending on "black-soot icicled roofs". No one else makes sleigh bells sound so cool. "I'm coming to sparkle the dark up," she tells us. Yes you are, Kate, this Christmas and always. Jitendra Joshi
Paul Van Dyk and Saint Etienne - Tell Me Why (The Riddle)
The gentlest of trance numbers, and possibly the only one you might associate with Christmas. Sarah Cracknell's ever-so-softly delivered lyrics are about moving on after a break-up and this isn't one you'll hear on the aisles of Asda. But pretend you didn't read that: take the "snow is falling" chorus line very literally, and boom, it's a Christmas song you can put on in Ibiza. WM
Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg - Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto
Christmas is all about family, and what could be more Christmassy than real-life cousins Nate and Snoop Dogg teaming up for a song about the joys of getting weed as a stocking filler? Snoop getting in the festive spirit doesn’t stretch much further than him offering to “steal a gift for my old grandpappy”, but it doesn’t matter a jot.
The bassline, lifted from an old Isaac Hayes track, is festively funky, while Nate Dogg’s hook – a nod to the similarly titled James Brown track – is dumbly joyful. Things reach a low sort of high when Snoop extols the virtues of charity at Christmas (“Catch me giving out turkeys at the church-house”) while simultaneously threatening the needy (“Don't try to work me, just stand in the line and everything gon' be fine”). Just call him Crip Kringle. HS
