11 alternative Christmas songs you haven’t heard but need on your festive playlist-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro

Add these songs to your Christmas playlists before it’s too late! (Picture: Getty)

It’s December. That means it’s officially illegal to not play Christmas songs from morning until night.

Whether it’s Mariah Carey, Wham!, or Wizzard, we’ve all got our favourites – collected over years of making precious memories with family and friends.

But what of the songs that don’t always appear on those classic Christmas compilation albums? What of the songs that Spotify doesn’t feature on its playlists?

Hundreds of famous artists around the world have recorded potential Christmas classics that never seem to get the coverage their quality deserves.

In fact, some of the biggest names in pop have released Christmas songs you might never have heard before in your life, in December or otherwise.

Here are 11 new songs to add to your Christmas playlist this year.

Christmas Tree Farm – Taylor Swift

Without much doubt, 2024 has been the year of Taylor Swift – if you’ve avoided hearing about the Eras Tour at all… well, where have you been?

And if you have heard about the Eras Tour – either from your children or your friends – why not finish 2024 with Taylor’s Christmas song from 2019?

Christmas Tree Farm tells a lovely story about a woman who, to escape the stress of shopping for presents and buying heaps of food, imagines a farm of Christmas trees where people can dance and forget their troubles.

Plus, it rhymes ‘mistletoe’ with ‘fire glow’ and very obviously takes inspiration from Mariah Carey’s Christmas classic, so of course it belongs on your family playlist this year.

Of course, this song is well known among Taylor’s fans, but for some reason it hasn’t quite crept onto radio playlists or Spotify suggestions yet. Maybe 2025 will be the year of Christmas Tree Farm.

Christmas Without You – OneRepublic

In 2011, three years after breaking out with their first hits Apologize and Stop & Stare, OneRepublic were having some time away from the very top of the UK charts.

Their second album from 2009, Waking Up, was a success in America, but it didn’t pick up much of a following in the UK. It wasn’t until 2013 and their song Counting Stars that they made a big British comeback.

Eighteen months before that return, they released Christmas Without You, a melancholic festive song written by frontman Ryan Tedder while he experienced the Holidays in a hotel room, away from his wife and family.

In the song, Ryan admits that he’s ‘missed Thanksgiving’ and ‘a birthday or two’ during his career in pop, but it’s Christmas without his loved ones that proves to be too much for him to bear.

This sweet little waltzy number will blend right into a perfect family Christmas playlist and remind all of us about how special this time of year can be.

I Won’t Be Home for Christmas – Blink-182

Blink-182 recorded their Christmas hit 27 years ago (Picture: KMazur/WireImage)

Blink-182 have a couple of Christmas songs to choose from, but Happy Holidays You B*****d and Not Another Christmas Song didn’t make our cut.

We preferred the idea of showing you the first song Blink-182 recorded together before drummer Travis Barker was even in the band.

Recorded in 1997, around the time of their second album Dude Ranch – which featured their original drummer Scott Raynor – they wrote I Won’t Be Home for Christmas to promote the record.

It saw the light of day in the late 1990s, being played on various radio stations, but it wasn’t officially released as a single until 2001 – at the time, Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis were three of the biggest rockstars in the world.

A parody of I’ll Be Home for Christmas, this song follows the story of a man who winds up in an overnight jail after attacking a group of irritating carol singers.

‘Outside the carolers start to sing, I can’t describe the joy they bring, because joy is something they don’t bring me.’ Don’t sing at this guy’s house!

Player’s Ball (Christmas Version) – OutKast

We all know OutKast – they did Hey Ya, Ms. Jackson, Roses, and a whole load of other classic rap and pop tracks from the 1990s and early 2000s.

But did you know their career was launched in 1994 with a Christmas song? That’s right. Before they were OutKast, an acclaimed and successful hip hop outfit from Atlanta, they were just two dudes with a holiday hit.

Two weeks before it was properly released as a single in America, their debut hit Player’s Ball was re-written to include a load of Christmas content in the lyrics.

The lyric that once read, ‘The player’s ball is happening, all day every day,’ now said, ‘When the player’s ball is happening on Christmas day.’

It was included on a compilation album called A LaFace Family Christmas and featured other big names in the tracklist, including Toni Braxton, Usher, and TLC.

Probably not one to play around the kids, but when everyone under 16 has gone to bed after the annual living room screening of It’s a Wonderful Life, feel free to enjoy this underrated Christmas classic for yourself.

Joy – George Winston

If Christmas Day ends up being a long one in 2024 – noise, toys, food, family… it can all become a bit much – then George Winston’s Joy is the one for you.

The American classical pianist, who died in 2023 aged 74, recorded and released a beautiful, relaxing Christmas album, titled December, in 1982.

Full of original piano compositions and newly arranged covers of festive classics, this is the ideal Christmas album to wind down to after a busy day.

It’s just you, George, and a piano for 45 minutes. Perfect, too, for when the presents are being opened early in the morning and you just need some calming music to set the scene.

The album never sold that well in the UK but in America it flew off the shelves before Christmas ’82, with over three million copies sold as of 2024.

Yule Shoot Your Eye Out – Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy wanted BB guns for Christmas in 2009 (Picture: Scott Gries/Getty)

When Fall Out Boy released their 2009 greatest hits album, Believers Never Die, many fans were surprised to find the band’s Christmas song Yule Shoot Your Eye Out.

The American four-piece, formed in 2001, had gone on hiatus in 2008, and fans weren’t sure if Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz and co. would ever come back.

Believers Never Die was released in November 2009 and as a nice bit of bonus content, Yule Shoot Your Eye Out was added onto the end of the album.

Described by fans as ‘basically the opposite of All I Want For Christmas is You’, the song is sung from the perspective of someone telling (presumably) an ex-partner not to come home for Christmas.

‘Don’t call me when the snow comes falling down,’ Patrick sings over an unusually subdued instrumental from the pop punk band, who trade their fast rhythms and distorted guitars for pretty acoustics.

Hey Sis, It’s Christmas! – RuPaul Charles

If you want to add some camp, raunchy fun to your Christmas playlist, look no further than RuPaul Charles’ Hey Sis, It’s Christmas!

The drag superstar and host of RuPaul’s Drag Race (and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK) launched this holiday banger six years ago.

This might be one that’s best served for an adults only late-night Christmas Eve party, especially if the lyrics are anything to go by.

‘Red thong, sing-a-song, gingerbread men gonna ping your pong’ – it sounds like the best party in the world but maybe not one your family members should hear about before 10pm, yeah?

A few years after its release, the song was featured at the end of the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, with the finalists all performing their own versions of the song.

The Christmas Song – Weezer

The late 90s were a tough time for Weezer. The band were on hiatus and lead singer Rivers Cuomo was holed up in his house, desperately trying to get his career back on track.

In the five years that passed between their divisive 1996 album Pinkerton and its successful follow-up, 2001’s The Green Album, the band released just two songs: a Christmas CD, recorded almost entirely in a home studio.

Dropping on January 1, 2001, it was the first big sign for fans that Weezer were really back. And one of those songs has endured as an alternative Christmas classic.

Simply titled The Christmas Song, it tells the story of someone left alone on Christmas, waiting for his new girlfriend to call him up and spend some time together.

‘Here I sit, waiting beside the tree all by myself.’

The song has had an even bigger resurgence since 2022 after it was used at the end of an episode of the American drama series The Bear.

It’s Christmas and I F*****g Miss You – Charly Bliss feat. PUP

Charly Bliss wrote a Christmas song while separated from each other over Christmas 2020 (Picture: Lucky Number Music/Milan Dileo)

Christmas 2020 was a tough one for absolutely everybody. Covid, and the subsequent lockdown measures, changed the world. To say that it messed up our festive plans is an understatement.

Inspired by spending Christmas apart, American rock bands Charly Bliss and PUP teamed up over the internet to write a Covid-inspired holiday song.

Recorded between America and Australia, ‘It’s Christmas and I F*****g Miss You’ sets the scene: ‘With you it was festive, now I’m alone it’s manic depressive, crying on the couch to Elf alone.’

The music video features members of both bands in their own personal ‘bubbles’ (remember those?) and provides an incredible time capsule of when we all celebrated Christmas over Zoom.

But while the content of the song is sad, it also reinforces the fact that what makes Christmas special is togetherness, being surrounded by people you love – whether that’s family or friends (or your pets!).

Needless to say, this one is a bit sweary, so this might also be one for later in the evening, when it’s just the adults sipping eggnog as the fire dies out.

Christmastime Is Here (Vocal) – Vince Guaraldi Trio

A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t just an overlooked festive TV classic in the UK, the soundtrack album created for it by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is too.

Released in 1965, the beloved Peanuts characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Linus and Lucy Van Pelt put on a Christmas play for their friends.

The soundtrack combines smooth jazz and traditional carols to give you the class Christmas mixture of fireside warmth and snowy frost.

At the top of the tree on the album is the vocal rendition of Christmastime Is Here, which has become a Christmas standard in America but has never really become part of the festive playlist in the UK.

And that’s a massive shame – A Charlie Brown Christmas is now staple TV viewing in my family and this soundtrack gets rotated every December at least twice.

Add it to your own collection of Christmas albums and we promise that each December will be enriched from here on out.

Sympathy 4 the Grinch – 100 Gecs

100 Gecs have expressed sympathy for the Grinch… (Picture: Mat Hayward/Getty Images)

While most artists writing Christmas songs in 2020 let the pandemic influence their thinking, American duo 100 Gecs took a different approach.

Instead, they wrote Sympathy 4 the Grinch – a song about two children who drive to Lapland, steal Santa’s bag, and escape into the night, all as revenge for being put on the Naughty List.

‘I was good every day but he didn’t give a f**k!’ they sing in the chorus. So, yeah, while it’s obviously not suitable for very young kids, any teenagers over 16 will be able to have a big laugh.

The song combines jingle bells and Christmas tinsel with loud electronics and fast ska rhythms, and the music video (if you can call it that) sees singer Laura Les chasing after producer Dylan Brady’s car in a perfect circle for almost two minutes.

There’s always a degree of cheeky irony to the music and content 100 Gecs make and Sympathy 4 the Grinch is no different, sitting alongside the rest of their work comfortably.

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