These are the sounds of Christmas
The holiday season is a combination of sensations: the taste of sweet baking, the scent of a crackling fire, the touch of a cool winter breeze, and the sound of festive singing. It’s infectious. Classic Christmas carols and holiday jingles, serenades of sweet sentiments, all define the season with a series of notes and words. Out of all this merry music, which Christmas albums are the best-selling of all time?
This kind of ranking comes with some stipulations. The main players in tracking the numbers used are RIAA certification information, which is used by Billboard, and Nielsen SoundScan. Billboard uses certification information to determine total sales of holiday albums. For more perspective, from 1940 to 2022, there’s been anywhere from one to 70 separate albums released each year. So, to make it to the top 10 that sell like wildfire means standing out against a big and ever-growing crowd. Check out the list below. Which are your must-haves for the holiday playlist?
Johnny Mathis is no stranger to achieving musical greatness, with dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status. 73 have made the Billboard charts as well. For his successes, Mathis was bestowed with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and is a Grammy Hall of Fame inductee.
Autumn 1958 marked the release of his very first Christmas album, Merry Christmas. Mathis made this holiday album business look easy, as the album promptly made the Billboard list of the 25 Best-Selling Pop LPs. That holiday season, the EP of Merry Christmas, Vol. 1 peaked at number two. “Winter Wonderland” received a noteworthy amount of praise. The Christmas album embraces Mathis’s early preference for standard music, showcased in his use of traditional carols while utilizing holiday hits. Sales put this at around 5,240,000.
By the 1967 release of A Christmas Album, Barbra Streisand had released nine other albums – but this would be her own first foray into releasing a Christmas album. Considering this is Streisand, who boasts the textbook definition of a legendary career, just another successful release probably sounds like just another Tuesday. But this too managed to be exceptional, as it’s actually one of Streisand’s very best-selling albums of all time, with around 5,370,000 sold.
The contents of A Christmas Album were so successful, several tracks were reissued in 1970 for Seasons Greetings from Barbra Streisand…and Friends, which also featured tracks by Doris Day and Jim Nabors on Side 2. Anytime an EGOT winner wants to sing about Christmas, we have to listen.
In 1988, Celine Dion secured international acclaim thanks to her victory in Eurovision Song Contest, winning against a sizable chunk of the world, and ten years later, she’d once again make music history by releasing one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time.
These Are Special Times has sold around 5,440,000 albums and features covers of popular Christmas songs. These astronomical sales made it certified 6x Platinum. Zoom out and look abroad, and the album has sold over 12 million copies! Standouts include the grand “O Holy Night” and the original composition “Don’t Save It All for Christmas Day.”
No list of Christmas albums would be complete without mentioning Mariah Carey. She technically can’t be called the Queen of Christmas, as reported by Rolling Stone, but she is the mind behind one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time and that counts for a lot!
With around 5,500,000 sales, the album Merry Christmas was released in 1994 and features the legendary “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” That, itself, went on to become one of the best-selling songs, period, in music sales history. The use of soul and gospel received praise. As of 2021, the album has 15 million sales, quite the gift for an album dedicated entirely to one time of the year, no matter how wonderful that time is.
Treat your ears to the sweet tones of certified multi-platinum actor, songwriter, and singer Josh Groban. He’s been active since 1997 and ten years into his career, he released Noël. Upon its initial release in 2007, it sold 3,699,000 copies; its popularity carried on long enough that Noël was the best-selling holiday album of 2008 too. Jump ahead to today and those sales numbers have jumped to 5,890,000 in the U.S. alone.
Of course when music geniuses work together, great things happen for listeners. Starting off, Groban had actually been called to fill in for Andrea Bocelli for practicing a duet of “The Prayer” with none other than Celine Dion. Groban celebrates the holidays with his powerful voice and Noël is full of classics like “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and “Silent Night.” Which is your favorite?
Between its ancient history, contemporary cozy atmosphere, the crackle of burning wood, and long-established carols, something about Christmas conjures up images of a quaint, rustic past. Enter Mannheim Steamroller, a group dedicated to neoclassical new-age music, with a sometimes distinctly futuristic sound and plenty of electric instruments, quite the unexpected reimagining. With 6,000,000 sales of A Fresh Aire Christmas, Mannheim Steamroller proves that sometimes change can be very successful.
Led by percussionist/composer Chip Davis, Mannheim already had an unexpected start, as Davis’s first big project was “Convoy,” a 1975 novel song voiced by Bill Fries that’s immortalized in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time. The same mind behind that created the Christmas album that has creative reimaginings of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Carol of the Bells,” and “Greensleeves.”
Only something so successfully out-there as Mannheim Steamroller could place directly above so definitive a Mannheim album. Chip Davis does it again with the 1984 Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, known more succinctly as just Christmas. It actually predates A Fresh Aire Christmas by four years and established much of the group’s famous setpieces, including “Good King Wenceslas,” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” and their own haunting version of “Stille Nacht.” They’re the soundtrack to Christmas the same way the tree is the visual symbol of it.
Like its festive album brother, Christmas has sold 6,000,000 copies and has been certified 6× Platinum by the RIAA. Seven out of 11 tracks were enduring enough to make it into the 2004 Christmas Celebration compilation album.
Known as a renowned jazz pianist, actor, and singer, Nat King Cole can be expected to release a successful holiday album, but 6,000,000 sales for The Magic of Christmas is still impressive. Cole is an irrevocable part of entertainment history as the first African American man to host an American television series and for generating one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time.
What’s more, it released back in 1960. Over six decades later and it has yet to be significantly displaced in any ranking of celebrated and popular holiday albums. It’s little wonder why, with a tracklist of powerful renditions of “Silent Night,” “O Tannenbaum,” “O, Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Deck the Halls.” Cole died just five years after this history release but to this day, many and more find themselves singing along to his beautiful compilation.
Of course one of the best-selling artists of all time released one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. Bringing forth his skill as a smooth jazz saxophonist, producer, and composer alike, Kenny G had all the tools to make something perfect for the holidays. The result of his efforts was the 1994 album Miracles: The Holiday Album. This, too, contains celebrated classics including “White Christmas,” “Away in a Manger,” and “Little Drummer Boy.”
From there, we also got the single “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which peaked at number 26 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary charts. Album sales are estimated at about 7,370,000, a truly magical number for a magical time!
Who else should have the highest-selling Christmas album than the king himself, Elvis Presley? Presley’s career was technically briefly interrupted by his military service, but the momentum had been built by then. So, when the 1970s came around, Elvis was an established cultural phenomenon who had women swooning and his colleagues – especially Frank Sinatra – fuming at the sight of his gyrating hips and bedazzled jumpsuits. But what are the holidays for, if not dancing among shimmering, colorful lights?
That also meant the release of his ‘70s album Elvis’s Christmas Album was met with exceptional fanfare. The album housed songs that utilized his background in and appreciation for gospel. It also managed to see “Blue Christmas” by Doy O’Dell surpassed by Elvis’s version. The result of all this fame and holiday cheer? A still-unsurpassed 10,000,000 sales.
Now, this list primarily looks at the number of units sold. But there are a lot of traits to look at when ranking holiday music. With just a few piano keys, songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas can get everyone believing in little Christmas trees that just need some love. Who can disagree with Andy Williams when he declares, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year?” Christmas is tied to a delightful play on the senses and, as Buddy the elf wisely said, “the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” So, what is your favorite album for Christmas, and which song represents your love of the holiday best?
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