It’s time for one of our favorite annual traditions here at Switched on Pop – evaluating this season’s music offerings. Every year, artists produce small nuggets of festive gold (or coal). This is what you can count on every December: an endless supply of new gift-wrapping music that will probably never be heard because Mariah Carey exists. First of all, we take a look at four current titles, rated on a scale of zero to five.

Charlie Harding: We start with a perennial Christmas contender: Kelly Clarkson. “You for Christmas” was co-produced and co-written with some heavyweights: Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Turn up the chorus and you’ll hear exactly the kind of vibe she’s going for. It has everything: Motown production, lots of chromaticism, endless sleigh bells, huge vocals. I love it.

Nate Sloan: You’re such a weakling. It only took ten seconds of retro Motown harmonies to make you love it. But I don’t object.

CH: That syncopated lead. She really kills this song. I’m stunned. I’m not usually a fan of Christmas music.

NS: You’re just bouncing in your seat.

CH: I love this headline: Ah, there, there, there, there, there, there. Oh, it’s so good. Who does she mean here? The Supremes?

NS: It really feels Supremes – a lot of these Christmas songs do. Or they refer to “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love.

CH: To make a good Christmas song, it must reference the era when classic pop fused with rock and roll and R&B. And this song is in that time frame. Musically it makes sense for us to work with Mark Ronson, the producer of Yesteryear Nostalgia, and Kelly Clarkson has the vocal chops to pull it off.

NS: She’s already proven that she’s firmly on vacation with her song “Underneath the Tree.”

CH: I think the new one is better.

SLEIGH BELLS: 5/5

NS: The questioning look on your face tells me you’re wondering what the song has to do with the holidays.

CH: Yeah, that’s kind of a nice LA folk-pop song. Reminds me a little of Shawn Mendes’ new record. I actually think it’s really wonderful. I like it very much. But yeah, I don’t get any holiday qualities. I mean, maybe it’s sitting next to a fire and playing a piano solo, but it lacks all the qualities necessary to be the retro holiday piece that I so admire about the last song.

NS: It’s definitely a different perspective. It’s the experience of coming home for the holidays and revisiting some memories you may have tried to avoid and facing them head on. I find it refreshing. It’s an approach to the holidays that I’ve never heard before, and it was written with some true pop all-stars: Dan Nigro – who we know from his work with Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan – and Ethan Gruska.

CH: Uh! That’s why I listened to Shawn Mendes’ record, because Gruska worked on that record too. By the way, he’s one of the greatest producers in pop music right now.

NS: Unfortunately there is a bit of Lumineers in the chorus.

CH: Hey! Hey! I think this song has more in common with, say, Taylor Swift’s “Lover.” So I’m not sure about giving sleigh bells yet, even though I really like this song.

SLEIGH BELLS: 0/5

CH: They give us even more secret Christmas music here. I like Orville Peck. I really made an effort to see his performance at Newport Folk last summer – he blew everyone away, especially with his song “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” a duet he does with Willie Nelson.

I love this holiday song. I feel a strong nostalgic mood, even if I don’t hear any obvious Christmas echoes yet.

NS: It has that literally Sleigh bells.

CH: We literally have sleigh bells and we have a kind of Nashville, big orchestrated sound that reminds me of Patsy Cline. I noticed that the song is in 6/8 time. Something about this count feels holiday-like. Do you have a great theory as to why?

NS: I can only imagine that in the 19th century, many of the Christmas songs we still know today were written in triple or compound meters: “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night,” “O Tannenbaum.” So when we hear these three-bars today, we might be reminded of the Christmas carols of yesteryear.

SLEIGH BELLS: 4/5

CH: Okay, this is as smooth as a perfectly wrapped present. I feel like Dan and Shay are interfering with the story of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” – I want to unwrap you, you are the gift.

NS: I was fascinated by how this duo once managed to introduce an EDM-style post-chorus pop drop into a traditional country song. We achieve a similar effect in “Take Me Home for Christmas.”

CH: What is the word for this genre?

NS: Unfortunately it has to be Funktree.

CH: I like it. I love a Telecaster guitar. I love twang. This is not an attempt to do more than exactly what it is. I think it’s a great little novelty, like a perfect Christmas present that makes you think, “Oh, that’s lovely.” But next year I’ll forget about it.

SLEIGH BELLS: 3.5/10

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