The Most-Covered Christmas Songs Ever

Christmas music is everywhere right now. Radio stations, streaming services and department stores are pumping it in like some kind of gingerbread-scented gas. We're almost two weeks from Christmas, so we're hitting peak holiday music season.

The modern Christmas canon mostly comes from the middle of the 20th century. But every year artists drop new Christmas tracks. Some actually catch on—Justin Bieber's 2011 "Mistletoe" still gets serious streaming, along with Ariana Grande's 2013 "Santa Tell Me."

Spotify has over 1.3 million tracks of holiday music in their database. They sent over data showing which songs appear the most across different albums by different artists.

The winner? "Silent Night," with over 26,000 individual tracks on Spotify. "White Christmas" comes i n second with about 20,000. "Jingle Bells" has around 19,000.

Here's the thing: most of these songs are in the public domain. They're free to use. No royalties. That's clearly why people keep covering them.

The List of Most-Covered Christmas Songs

Below is a list of the 20 most covered Christmas songs on Spotify, along with the year each song was written.

1. Silent Night (1818)

2. White Christmas (1940)

3. Jingle Bells (1857)

4. The Christmas Song (1944)

5. The First Noel (1833)

6. Winter Wonderland (1934)

7. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (1934)

8. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1943)

9. Joy to the World (1836)

10. Away In a Manger (1887)

11. God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen (1827)

12. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing (1840)

13. O Holy Night (1847)

14. I’ll Be Home for Christmas (1943)

15. Deck the Halls (1800)

16. O Little Town of Bethlehem (1868)

17. Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1939)

18. Silver Bells (1950)

19. It Came Upon the Midnight Clear (1850)

20. Ave Maria (1825)

21. O Come All Ye Faithful (1751)

22. Sleigh Ride (1948)

23. We Wish You a Merry Christmas (1500)

24. What Child Is This? (1865)

25. Blue Christmas (1964)

It's All About Copyright

Look at the top 25 most-covered Christmas songs. The newest one is "Blue Christmas," which came out in 1964 during the LBJ administration. Sixty percent of them came out before 1923.

So the ambient noise of Christmas is basically boomer nostalgia plus U.S. copyright law. That's it. That's what defines the season musically.

Movies Do the Same Thing

This shows up in movies too. "Jingle Bells" is the most common song in movie soundtracks, period. If you need to tell the audience it's the holiday season, playing "Jingle Bells" gets the point across without paying anyone.

Nine of the top 10 Christmas songs in movies are copyright-free. Unless it's essential to the plot, picking a free holiday song over one where you'd owe royalties just makes sense.

Nobody Actually Wants This

Here's where it gets weird. The supply for these songs wildly outpaces demand. Only 13 of the top 50 covered songs appeared in the top 50 most-streamed holiday songs.

The most recent song to both inspire tons of covers and see substantial streaming is 1985's "Last Christmas" by Wham!. That's 40 years ago.

So if you're dropping a holiday album in 2025, society doesn't need another recording of "Silent Night." We've got over 26,000 versions already.

What People Actually Want

The most-streamed Christmas songs tell a completely different story. Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" dominates. Michael Bublé's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is second. Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is third.

These aren't ancient public domain songs getting covered thousands of times. These are relatively modern tracks people actually want to hear.

Bieber's "Mistletoe" shows up at number four. The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" is fifth. Then you get Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Wham!'s "Last Christmas."

Ariana Grande's "Santa Tell Me" is eighth. Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is ninth. The songs artists cover the most aren't the songs people actually listen to. They're just the songs that are free to record.

Mariah Carey Owns Christmas

Mariah Carey basically owns Christmas at this point. "All I Want for Christmas Is You" came out in 1994 and has dominated holiday streaming ever since. It's not in the public domain. It's not a cover of some ancient carol. Just a really good Christmas song people genuinely love.

Michael Bublé has a similar thing going. His 2011 Christmas album turned him into the unofficial king of Christmas music. He covers classics but does them well enough that people keep coming back.

The lesson? Either write an original banger like Mariah or cover the classics way better than everyone else like Bublé. Recording the 26,497th version of "Silent Night" because it's free isn't the move.

The Reality

Christmas music is stuck in the past. Most covered songs are either ancient public domain carols or mid-20th century standards. The newest song that gets covered a lot came out in 1964.

Artists keep covering them because they're free. Movies use them to set the mood without paying royalties. Spotify ends up with over 1.3 million holiday tracks that mostly nobody listens to. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé dominate actual streaming because they made music people genuinely enjoy, not just music that's cheap to record.

The ambient noise of Christmas is defined by copyright law and the fact that recording "Jingle Bells" for the 19,000th time costs nothing.

We don't need another version of "Silent Night." But we'll get a few thousand more this year anyway because they're free to record and somebody's got to fill out that Christmas album tracklist.

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