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First Country is a compilation of the best new country songs, videos & albums that dropped this week. Trace Adkins and Melissa Etheridge team upn for the best duet for their careers, Kenny Chesney remembers his recently passed dog, Ashley McBryde’s standout track from ‘Ashley McBryde: Presents Lindeville’ and more!
In 1994, Mariah Carey‘s Merry Christmas, which contains her seasonal chart-topping carol “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” helped revitalize the contemporary pop holiday album. The singer’s effort was not the top selling yuletide-themed project of the year — that title went to Kenny G’s Miracles: The Holiday Album — but its enduring popularity helped set a new standard for the modern Christmas album.
By the turn of the century, recording a holiday album became a rite of passage for almost every burgeoning pop star, with some releasing more than one over the course of their careers. Mariah herself released Merry Christmas II You in 2010, while a cappella group Pentatonix dropped six holiday albums in a decade.
At the same time, seasonal music, secular or otherwise, continues to transcend genre and age. Both Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber were just 17 when they released their first holiday collections, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection and Under the Mistletoe, respectively. And now that well over a decade has passed since both releases, only time will tell if the two have festive fa-la-la follow-ups up their sleeves.
To celebrate “the most wonderful time of the year,” Billboard decided to take a look back and tally up the 21 best Christmas albums of the 21st century so far. Whether you’re curled up by the fireplace with a warm cup of cocoa, taking a drive through winter wonderland or rocking around the Christmas tree with your friends and family, listen in below.
And check out our top 100 Best Christmas Songs of All Time list here.
Westeros isn’t so different from the world of pop. The top slot on the Billboard charts is just as sought-after as the Iron Throne — though artists use their music as weapons instead of, well, actual weapons.
Back in 2016, ahead of the season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO, we decided to see if we could draw a direct line between the citizens of the Seven Kingdoms and our very own pop royalty. These people are playing very different games, but often using similar strategies. We published animated illustrations reimagining six of the biggest musicians in the world as six of the biggest characters on the wildly popular show, which came to an end in 2019 after eight seasons.
This week (Dec. 7), our gallery of GIFs became relevant once again, when Taylor Swift told The Hollywood Reporter for their Women in Entertainment Power 100 issue which Thrones character she most identifies with: Arya Stark. “I realize I don’t know how to use a sword and I’ve never had to rise up from near death to go on an epic revenge mission,” the pop star quipped. “But I have been in the music industry for over 15 years, so …”
When we published the original gallery, we had Swift pegged as the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen — of course, that was before (spoiler alert) Dany burned it all down in the final season. Also since the gallery was posted, Swift has spoken of her kinship with the Stark daughters (Sansa too) and how they partially inspired her 2017 album reputation. “So much of my imagination was spent on Game of Thrones,” Swift told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “At the time, I was making reputation and I didn’t talk about it in interviews, so I didn’t reveal that a lot of the songs were influenced by the show.”
But Swift isn’t our only pop star featured in the gallery. Below, find animated illustrations of pop stars as their kindred Game of Thrones characters. (And maybe for our next round, we’ll include musicians as House of the Dragon standouts.)
This gallery was originally published in 2016.
Bad Bunny talks to our Chief Content Officer of Latin Leila Cobo about his current tour, World’s Hottest Tour, his favorite places to tour, how he approaches collaborations, when he wants to take a break from his career, reflects on his journey to the top and more!
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