The Million Songs of Christmas
No other holiday dominates our listening like Christmas. During this season, we are exposed to a seemingly never ending playlist of Christmas music. So its no surprise that there's a huge amount of Christmas music available on Spotify. How much? Let's take a look. How much Christmas music is there? It is actually quite hard to pinpoint the exact number of Christmas songs. First, every week during the holiday season thousands more Christmas songs are added to the set. Second, some songs are seasonal - is Frosty The Snowman a Christmas song? Not literally, but it gets a lot of play at this time of year, even by the antipodes. Finally, there are a number of other holidays and celebrations at this time of year such as Hanukkah, Boxing Day, New Years, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, and Festivus that we want to include in this category. So when I say "Christmas Music" I'm referring to western music that is played primarily during December. There's probably a better term to describe this music, but terms like seasonal, and holiday have their own special baggage - perhaps something like music coincident with the northern hemispheric winter solstice is the most precise description, but lets stick with Christmas music just to keep things simple. So how much Christmas music is there? In early December 2014, crack music + data nerd Aaron Daubman dove into the Spotify + Echo Nest music catalog and found 914,047 Christmas tracks - that's just under a million Christmas tracks. Let's unwrap this dataset to see what we can find. First, some basic stats: Those 914,047 tracks represent 180,660 unique songs and were created by 63,711 unique artists - from Aaron Neville to Zuma the King. The top 20 artists with the most Christmas tracks in the Spotify catalog are all pre-Beatles artists:
Artists with the most Christmas Tracks
# Name Count 1 Bing Crosby 22382 2 Frank Sinatra 17979 3 Elvis Presley 12381 4 Nat King Cole 11613 5 Johann Sebastian Bach 8958 6 Dean Martin 8000 7 Perry Como 7529 8 Ella Fitzgerald 6428 9 Mahalia Jackson 5883 10 Mario Lanza 5377 11 Johnny Mathis 5036 12 Rosemary Clooney 4538 13 Peggy Lee 4450 14 Harry Belafonte 4054 15 The Andrews Sisters 3567 16 Louis Armstrong 3481 17 Gene Autry 3411 18 Doris Day 2985 19 Pat Boone 2767 20 Connie Francis 2500
Yes, that's right, Bing Crosby has 22,382 different Christmas tracks (!) in the Spotify catalog. Now, a little digression on what we consider to be a unique track. Music, especially popular music, is released in many forms. A very popular song, such as Bing Crosby's White Christmas, may appear on a wide range of albums - from the original studio release to a plethora of Christmas Compilations and artist 'best of' albums. Each of these track releases may have different album art, different rights holders and regional licenses. Thus, even though the audio for White Christmas may be the same on each of the release, we consider each release as a different track. White Christmas Let's take a closer look at Bing Crosby's White Christmas. In our catalog of nearly a million Christmas tracks, 2,196 of them are Bing Crosby's classic. I'll say that again, just because it is a rather phenomenal fact - there are 2,196 different albums on Spotify that contain Bing's White Christmas. It is hard to believe, so I created a web page that contains all 2,196 of the albums so you can see them all. Click on the image below to load them all up (warning - with 2000+ album covers it's a bit of a browser buster).
White Christmas isn't the only uber-track of the holidays. Here are the top 25 Christmas tracks based upon the number of times they have been released on an album:
The most released Christmas tracks
# Name Count 1 Bing Crosby - White Christmas 2196 2 Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby 1286 3 Elvis Presley - Blue Christmas 1285 4 Frank Sinatra - Jingle Bells 1121 5 Harry Belafonte - Mary's Boy Child 904 6 Bing Crosby - Silver Bells 881 7 Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song 870 8 Frank Sinatra - The Christmas Waltz 811 9 Rosemary Clooney - Suzy Snowflake 788 10 Bobby Helms - Jingle Bell Rock 779 11 Elvis Presley - White Christmas 738 12 Judy Garland - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 735 13 Frank Sinatra - White Christmas 703 14 Frank Sinatra - Christmas Dreaming 696 15 Frank Sinatra - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 695 16 Elvis Presley - Silent Night 688 17 Elvis Presley - I Believe 664 18 Frank Sinatra - Santa Claus Is Coming to Town 660 19 Louis Armstrong - Zat You Santa Claus 598 20 Dean Martin - The Christmas Blues 575 21 Frank Sinatra - Mistletoe and Holly 568 22 Louis Armstrong - Cool Yule 566 23 Frank Sinatra - Silent Night 563 24 Bing Crosby - Jingle Bells 560 25 Elvis Presley - Santa Claus Is Back in Town 559
You can see all of the releases for Elvis's Blue Christmas and Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby here:
So there are lots of copies of Bing Crosby's White Christmas and Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby out there - but what are the most common Christmas songs overall? Which ones have been recorded the most by any artist? The following table shows the top 25:
Most recorded songs
# Name Recordings 1 Silent Night 19041 2 White Christmas 15928 3 Jingle Bells 14521 4 Winter Wonderland 9524 5 Joy to the World 9093 6 The First Noel 8731 7 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 8511 8 O Holy Night 7925 9 Hark The Herald Angels Sing 7727 10 The Christmas Song 7673 11 Away in a Manger 7544 12 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 7524 13 O Little Town of Bethlehem 7480 14 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town 6851 15 I'll Be Home for Christmas 6844 16 O Come All Ye Faithful 6273 17 Deck The Halls 6057 18 Silver Bells 6044 19 Ave Maria 5847 20 What Child Is This? 5755 21 We Wish You A Merry Christmas 5619 22 It Came Upon A Midnight Clear 5019 23 Sleigh Ride 5004 24 Blue Christmas 4688 25 Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! 4598
Of course this data may be confounded by the uber-tracks like White Christmas that have thousands of versions by a single artist, so lets look at the most recorded songs by unique artists - that is, we only count Bing Crosby once for White Christmas instead of 2,196 times. When we do that the top 25 changes a bit:
Most recorded Christmas songs (Unique Artists)
# Name Recordings 1 Silent Night 7406 2 Jingle Bells 4485 3 Joy to the World 3593 4 White Christmas 3592 5 O Holy Night 3536 6 The First Noel 3181 7 What Child Is This? 3150 8 Away in a Manger 3140 9 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 2871 10 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 2823 11 O Come All Ye Faithful 2675 12 Hark The Herald Angels Sing 2638 13 Angels We Have Heard on High 2494 14 Winter Wonderland 2489 15 The Christmas Song 2398 16 We Wish You A Merry Christmas 2281 17 Deck The Halls 2274 18 O Little Town of Bethlehem 2197 19 We Three Kings 2048 20 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town 1837 21 It Came Upon A Midnight Clear 1768 22 Ave Maria 1705 23 Auld Lang Syne 1603 24 Silver Bells 1599 25 I'll Be Home for Christmas 1577
The songs in green are the songs that are unique to each list. Artists with the most number of unique songs Bing Crosby is at the top of the Most Christmasy artists mainly because of the widespread re-issuing of White Christmas. But if we look at unique songs (i.e. White Christmas only counts once for Bing Crosby), the top Christmas artists look very different - with classical composers, Karaoke 'artists' and music factories topping the charts:
Artists with the most number of unique songs
1 Johann Sebastian Bach 3681 2 Bing Crosby 1462 3 The Karaoke Channel 1098 4 George Frideric Handel 903 5 A-Type Player 835 6 Frank Sinatra 816 7 ProSound Karaoke Band 762 8 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 691 9 SBI Audio Karaoke 641 10 Mega Tracks Karaoke Band 577 11 ProSource Karaoke 539 12 Ameritz Karaoke Entertainment 508 13 Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra 506 14 Elvis Presley 472 15 Perry Como 440 16 Karaoke - Ameritz 428 17 Nat King Cole 413 18 Ameritz Karaoke Band 397 19 Merry Tune Makers 385 20 Christmas Songs 370
Current popular Christmas crooner Michael Bublé, with 31 unique Christmas songs has a way to go before he makes it on to the most-unique-songs-recorded chart. Speaking of Karaoke - there's lots of Christmas Karaoke - 23,472 tracks to be precise. The top 25 Karaoke songs are the classics:
Top Karaoke Christmas Songs
# Name Count 1 White Christmas 345 2 Winter Wonderland 333 3 Silent Night 312 4 Jingle Bells 309 5 Last Christmas 258 6 Silver Bells 219 7 Blue Christmas 204 8 Santa Baby 189 9 The Christmas Song 185 10 Jingle Bell Rock 172 11 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 171 12 Please Come Home for Christmas 163 13 Little Drummer Boy 163 14 Sleigh Ride 156 15 O Come All Ye Faithful 154 16 Here Comes Santa Claus 150 17 Feliz Navidad 146 18 All I Want for Christmas Is You 146 19 O Holy Night 144 20 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 143 21 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree 135 22 Santa Claus Is Coming to Town 126 23 Frosty the Snowman 125 24 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 121 25 We Wish You a Merry Christmas 118
Top Terms We can build a good list of seasonal terms by finding the most frequently occurring words in song titles. Here are the top 75 or so, as a word cloud created by wordle (stop words are removed of course).
Longest Christmas song name There are lots of very long song names in the set of Christmas songs - the longest is this Christmas medly. Andrea und Manuela – Morgen kommt der Weohnachtsmann - Medley / Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann/Leise rieselt der Schnee/Oh du Fröhliche/Ihr Kinderlein kommet/Süßer die Glocken nie klingen/Oh Tannenbaum/Kling Glöckchen/Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht/Alle Jahre wieder - Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann/Leise rieselt der Schnee/Oh du Fröhliche/Ihr Kinderlein kommet/Süßer die Glocken nie klingen/Oh Tannenbaum/Kling Glöckchen/Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht/Alle Jahre wieder A great song for testing how well your music player UI deals with unusual titles. [spotify spotify:track:1m0QpCbDV9ePZtysvPkX2h] Conclusion One would think that with a million Christmas tracks we'd already have more than enough Christmas music - but, it seems, we still like new Christmas music. Ariana Grande's recently released Santa Tell Me is climbing the streaming charts (currently #44 at charts.spotify.com). Plus, there's seemingly no-end to the variety of Christmas Music. If White Christmas with Bing Crosby is not your style, then there's Blue Christmas by Elvis. [spotify spotify:track:01h424WG38dgY34vkI3Yd0] [spotify spotify:track:3QiAAp20rPC3dcAtKtMaqQ] And If that's not your thing, maybe you'll enjoy Red Christmas by Insane Clown Posse. [spotify spotify:track:0sug8rBtmQNxYeU5IsRb6V]