Michael Bublé, Mariah Carey & Brenda Lee: Here Are the Biggest Hits of the 2023 Holiday Season
Written by djfrosty on January 3, 2024
What was the biggest festive music over the latest holiday season?
Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart ran most recently from the rankings dated Nov. 4, 2023, through Jan. 6, 2024, while the Holiday 100 songs survey encompassed charts dated Dec. 2 through Jan. 6.
Below, Billboard recaps which titles fared best on the charts in those spans, with Michael Bublé, Mariah Carey and Brenda Lee among the season’s top performers, thanks to evergreen catalog hits.
Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums Chart – Nov. 4, 2023-Jan. 6, 2024:
- No. 1, Christmas, Michael Bublé
- No. 2, The Christmas Song, Nat King Cole
- No. 3, Merry Christmas, Mariah Carey
- No. 4, A Charlie Brown Christmas (Soundtrack), Vince Guaraldi Trio
- No. 5, A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector, Various Artists
- No. 6, Ultimate Christmas, Frank Sinatra
- No. 7, The Greatest Christmas Hits, Pentatonix
- No. 8, The Andy Williams Christmas Album, Andy Williams
- No. 9, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree: The Decca Christmas Recordings, Brenda Lee
- No. 10, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Burl Ives
- No. 11, Christmas, Cher
- No. 12, Christmas Classics, Bing Crosby
- No. 13, Wrapped in Red, Kelly Clarkson
- No. 14, The Dean Martin Christmas Album, Dean Martin
- No. 15, Greatest Christmas Songs, Perry Como
- No. 16, White Christmas, Bing Crosby
- No. 17, The Classic Christmas Album, Elvis Presley
- No. 18, The Jackson 5 Christmas Album, Jackson 5
- No. 19, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Classics, Gene Autry
- No. 20, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Soundtrack
Bublé’s Christmas leads the ranking of the biggest titles on the Top Holiday Albums chart during the latest holiday season (combining entries’ chart points over the surveys dated Nov. 4, 2023-Jan. 6, 2024). Of the 10 weeks that Top Holiday Albums published this season, Christmas was No. 1 for eight frames. It was the most streamed holiday collection in that span, with 452.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams for its songs in that stretch, according to Luminate. Since the set was released in 2011, it has collected 52 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Top Holiday Albums chart.
Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song and Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas round out the top three titles on our merry roundup.
The past season’s two biggest new holiday albums rank at Nos. 7 and 11, respectively, on the recap above: Pentatonix’s The Greatest Christmas Hits and Cher’s first-ever holiday set, Christmas. The former peaked at No. 3 on the season’s inaugural weekly Top Holiday Albums chart dated Nov. 4, as the latter debuted atop the tally. On the all-genre Billboard 200 dated Jan. 6, Pentatonix’s album climbs to No. 10, marking the vocal group’s 11th top 10 set.
Cher’s Christmas was the top-selling seasonal collection, by traditional album sales, over the latest run of the Top Holiday Albums chart. It sold 133,000 copies in the U.S. in that span.
Meanwhile, one artist has two titles among the top 20 biggest holiday albums of the season: Bing Crosby. His Christmas Classics ranks at No. 12, while White Christmas is No. 16. The two albums don’t share any recordings, although one song, “White Christmas,” is included on both, but via different renditions.
The weekly Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal albums in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
Billboard’s Holiday 100 Chart – Dec. 2, 2023-Jan. 6, 2024:
- No. 1, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey
- No. 2, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Brenda Lee
- No. 3, “Jingle Bell Rock,” Bobby Helms
- No. 4, “Last Christmas,” Wham!
- No. 5, “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” Burl Ives
- No. 6, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” Andy Williams
- No. 7, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!,” Dean Martin
- No. 8, “Feliz Navidad,” José Feliciano
- No. 9, “Sleigh Ride,” The Ronettes
- No. 10, “Underneath the Tree,” Kelly Clarkson
- No. 11, “Santa Tell Me,” Ariana Grande
- No. 12, “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You),” Nat “King” Cole
- No. 13, “White Christmas,” Bing Crosby with Ken Darby Singers & John Scott Trotter & His Orchestra
- No. 14, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Darlene Love
- No. 15, “Jingle Bells,” Frank Sinatra with The Orchestra & Chorus of Gordon Jenkins
- No. 16, “Deck the Halls,” Nat “King” Cole
- No. 17, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” Michael Bublé
- No. 18, “Blue Christmas,” Elvis Presley
- No. 19, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres and His Orchestra
- No. 20, “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane),” Gene Autry
Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” reigns as the top title on the Holiday 100 this Yuletide season (combining titles’ chart points over the rankings dated Dec. 2, 2023-Jan. 6, 2024), just ahead of Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” with both classics having hit notable recent chart highs.
Carey’s song, from 1994, spent two weeks atop the all-genre, multimetric Billboard Hot 100 in December, upping its total to 14 weeks at the summit dating to its first coronation in 2019. Among all holiday songs this season (as reflected on the Holiday 100 charts dated Dec. 2-Jan. 6), the track was the most heard on radio, with 145.5 million in all-format audience, and the most-sold, with 33,000 paid downloads.
Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” from 1958, meanwhile, completed its historic run to No. 1 on the Hot 100 at last in December – 65 years after its release – and led for three total weeks this season, through the Jan. 6-dated chart. It reigns as the most-streamed seasonal song over the holidays, with 246 million official U.S. streams during the Holiday 100’s six-week span this season.
While the bulk of the top 20 titles on the Holiday 100 for the latest season consists of classic carols over a half-century old, three of the songs were released in the 2010s: Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree,” from 2013 (No. 10), Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” from 2014 (No. 11), and Bublé’s “It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas,” from 2011 (No. 17).
Plus, of the top 20 holiday singles this season, Nat “King” Cole is the only act with two – “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)” (No. 12 above) and “Deck the Halls” (No. 16) – while the holidays, naturally, sounded a lot like Christmas, as “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” is the only composition to double-up in the top 20, thanks to versions by Bublé (No. 17) and Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres and His Orchestra (No. 19).
The weekly Holiday 100 chart ranks the 100 most popular seasonal songs in the U.S. based on all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data, the lattermost metric reflecting purchases of physical singles and digital tracks from full-service digital music retailers; digital singles sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites are excluded from chart calculations.