holiday
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Alicia Keys’ first seasonal effort, Santa Baby, jingles onto Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart (dated Nov. 19) as the list’s highest debut of the week, arriving at No. 19. The 11-track effort is Keys’ first independently released album after a career in the major-label system, first with J Records and then RCA. The download and streaming editions of the album are exclusive to the iTunes Store and Apple Music, respectively, while the physical album is widely available to all retailers.
The set bows with 3,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 10, according to Luminate, with traditional album sales powering 74% of that sum.
Meanwhile, Keys’ cover of “Please Come Home for Christmas,” from the Santa Baby project, enters at No. 27 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart – her seventh visit to the list.
A second debut joins Santa Baby on Top Holiday Albums as Switchfoot’s first Christmas release, This Is Our Christmas Album, enters at No. 400 (1,000 units). Coincidentally, both include covers of a pair of classics: “Christmas Time Is Here” and “The Christmas Song.”
Elsewhere on Top Holiday Albums, Michael Bublé’s Christmas crowns the chart for a 37th nonconsecutive week (rising 2-1 with 13,000 units; up 107%), while the various artists compilation A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector jumps 10-2 (a new peak) as holiday streaming programming kicked into gear post-Halloween in the chart’s tracking week of Nov. 4-10.
The Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal albums of the week 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 units 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. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram. The seasonal Top Holiday Albums returned for another festive season with the Oct. 22-dated list and will continue as part of Billboard’s weekly chart menu until it dashes away in January 2023.
When Christmas comes around…again! Kelly Clarkson unveiled her latest round of holiday merch on Wednesday (Nov. 16), complete with a festive bundle perfect for all your booze-related needs.
“My signature engraved wine tumbler is back in stock, y’all… and now it’s bundled with my engraved wine opener!” she wrote on Twitter followed by a string of drink emojis including a popped champagne bottle and clinking flutes.
The singer’s new batch of Christmas goodies also includes a cranberry red t-shirt emblazoned with “Santa, Can’t You Hear Me” — the title of her duet with Ariana Grande, which the pair recorded for 2021’s When Christmas Comes Again… while working together on Season 21 of The Voice. (They also performed the horn-infused bop live during Clarkson’s NBC holiday special last Christmas season.)
Speaking of the original American Idol winner’s second Christmas album, the studio set just picked up a 2023 Grammy nod for best traditional pop vocal album earlier this week, bringing the pop star’s total to 16 career nominations and three wins.
On The Kelly Clarkson Show — which has officially been renewed through 2025 — the talk show host has recently run through an impressively diverse string of “Kellyoke” picks, including “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Mama Cass with The Mamas & the Papas, Florence + the Machine’s Twilight: Eclipse cut “Heavy in Your Arms,” the original version of “Lady Marmalade” by LaBelle, Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Z.Z. Hill’s “Someone Else Is Steppin’ In” and more.
Get a look at Clarkson’s new wine-ready holiday merch and apparel below.
The Bocelli family, Debbie Gibson, Crowder and Thomas Rhett all continue to ring in the holiday season, leading a parade of debuts on Billboard’s Top Holiday Albums chart (dated Nov. 5).
A Family Christmas by Andrea Bocelli and his children Matteo and Virginia Bocelli enters Top Holiday Albums at No. 2 with 6,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 27, according to Luminate. Andrea Bocelli spent eight weeks atop the chart in the 2009-10 holiday season with My Christmas. While Virginia Bocelli makes her Billboard chart arrival with the new set, Matteo logged 14 weeks at No. 1 in 2018-19 on the Classical Digital Song Sales chart with “Fall on Me,” with his father.
The list’s second-highest debut of the week belongs to Gibson’s first seasonal collection, Winterlicious, at No. 17. Says the pop singer-songwriter, “I put a lot of thought into making a universal album inclusive of non-denominational songs, Christmas songs and even an original Hanukkah song, which highlights the strength and devotion of the Jewish community.”
The set also includes duets “with my two favorite Joes: Daddy Joe [Gibson’s father] on ‘White Christmas’ and Joey McIntyre on ‘Heartbreak Holiday.’ “
Gibson, who broke through with her hit debut single, “Only in My Dreams,” and album, Out of the Blue, in 1987, muses, “Getting the call to say I’ve charted in Billboard never gets old.”
Also bowing on the latest Top Holiday Albums tally: Crowder’s Milk & Cookies: A Merry Crowder Christmas (No. 21); Rhett’s Merry Christmas, Y’all (No. 22); XTC frontman Andy Partridge’s My Failed Christmas Career, Volume One (No. 26); and Joss Stone’s Merry Christmas, Love (No. 26).
Meanwhile, the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas returns to the top of the tally for its 13th week at No. 1. It earned 9,000 units, up 23%, in the tracking week.
The Top Holiday Albums chart ranks the 50 most popular seasonal albums of the week 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 sales, 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. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram. The seasonal Top Holiday Albums returned for another festive season with the Oct. 22-dated list and will continue as part of Billboard’s weekly chart menu until it dashes away in January 2023.