Predicting the Next Christmas Hit with the Radio

And regional Christmas hits around the US

Since late 2023, this newsletter has come out every Thursday, rain or shine. To keep the streak alive, I felt like I should still publish something even though today is Christmas Day. So, this is your Christmas Day edition of Can’t Get Much Higher. It continues a (mostly) annual tradition of using data to identify the next Christmas classic. This year, I also take a fun excursion into regional radio hits.

If for some reason you are still on the hunt for a Christmas gift for the music lover in your life, consider ordering a copy of my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 to 2025.

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Predicting the Next Christmas Hit with the Radio

By Chris Dalla Riva

Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is commonly cited as the best-selling single of all-time. But if you’ve been listening to Christmas radio over the last few weeks, you wouldn’t know that Crosby’s version is considered the canonical version of the Irving Berlin composition. You would think it was The Drifters’ rendition.

Earlier this week, I started aggregating data from 25 terrestrial radio stations across the United States that are only playing Christmas music. Across the last 50,000 spins, the most played song was “White Christmas” by The Drifters. Mr. Crosby’s original version was all the way down in 68th place!

Our tastes—as I detail throughout my book and this newsletter—change over time. The Drifters rendition has never been obscure, but its inclusion in both Home Alone and The Santa Clause, two wintertime classics from the 1990s, has certainly been a boon for its popularity.

Each year in this newsletter, I like to try to see how our tastes in Christmas music are changing, ultimately to find the next Christmas classic. A few years ago, I looked at Wikipedia traffic for Christmas songs to try to gauge what was becoming more popular. More recently, I dove into holiday playlists on Spotify. But this year, I wanted to mine the playlists of Christmas radio stations.

Terrestrial radio is a strange world. While it still reaches the majority of American each month, it is far less powerful in defining hit songs than a few decades ago. This can lead to weird programming choices where artists are significantly more or less popular on the radio than they are on streaming and vice verse. The holiday music world on the radio is much the same.

The top 10 songs across my samples of stations are mostly what you’d expect. Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.” Wham!’s “Last Christmas.” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” All your favorite December classics.

But amid that expectedness you find LeAnn Rimes’ rendition of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Brenda Lee’s version of “Jingle Bell Rock.” I do not think of these as part of the Christmas canon, but I guess if you spin Christmas music non-stop for a month some unexpected trends can emerge.

Even with these oddities in mind, we can look for recordings in the upper reaches of the list that were released in the last 15 years. This might give us a clue as to what the next generation of classics will look like.

This mass of terrestrial radio data doesn’t provide us with much new information on original Christmas classics released since 2010. As I’ve speculated over the last few years, “Underneath the Tree” and “Santa Tell Me” still lead the pack. Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm” and Katy Perry’s “Cozy Little Christmas” are also trying to make a case for themselves, along with efforts this year from the Jonas Brothers (“Coming Home For Christmas”) and Meghan Trainor (“Gifts For Me”).

Even if there aren’t too many original Christmas compositions joining the canon, there are some covers that are getting played a ton. Train’s rendition of “This Christmas” is almost in the top 20. Kelly Clarkson has a powerful version of “O Holy Night.” The violinist Lindsey Stirling has a popular rendition of “Carol of the Bells,” which actually happens to be the most played song if you look across different versions.

All that said, if I were a betting man, I would tell you to keep your eyes on Laufey. The Icelandic jazz singer Laufey is nearing the top 100 with her recording of “Santa Baby.” I’m not sure if that version will become canon, but I would bet that she has something in heavy rotation in the next decade.

Hawaiians Don’t Celebrate Christmas Like Alaskans

As I mentioned earlier, to put together this piece, I pulled the 50,000 most recently played songs across 25 terrestrial radio stations in the United States that are currently dedicated to Christmas music. One of those stations was Hawaii’s 92.3 KSSK. My assumption was that Bing Crosby’s “Mele Kalikimaka” would dominate that station. I was very wrong.

Well, I guess I was kind of wrong. While Crosby’s version of “Mele Kalikimaka” has not been played on Hawaii’s 92.3 KSSK this December, a version by Willie K is the 40th most played on the station. Willie K, the late Hawaiian musician, has been played on no other stations in my sample this December.

This is representative of Hawaiian Christmas music tastes generally. Though you still get some huge holiday hits on 92.3 KSSK that you’ll hear in Los Angeles and Chicago and Detroit and basically any other metro area, Hawaii has its own Christmas canon.

Songs like Ho'okena’s “The Prayer,” Colbie Caillat’s “Christmas in the Sand,” Paula Fuga’s “Christmas Luau,” and Jimmy Buffet’s “Christmas Island” are only heard on the Pacific archipelago. In fact, if we compare every station, Hawaii’s 92.3 is the most unique and Alaska’s 98.9 is the least unique.

Most stations have their own little quirks, though. You’re more likely to hear the Backstreet Boys’ “Christmas in New York” and Rob Thomas’s “A New York Christmas” on New York’s 106.7 Lite FM. Country-tinged holiday songs, especially those by Dan + Shay, are much more common in Houston and San Antonio. And Worcester, Massachusetts has a particular obsession with Sabrina Carpenter.

No matter where you are on this December 25th, I hope in addition to spinning your favorite Christmas classics—whatever that may mean in your local metro area—that you take some time to play something off the beaten path. Here’s something to start with: “Captain Santa Claus (And His Reindeer Space Patrol)” by Bobby Helms, the B-side to his classic “Jingle Bell Rock.” Merry Christmas!

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If you enjoyed this piece, consider ordering my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. The book chronicles how I listened to every number one hit in history and used what I learned during the journey to write a data-driven history of popular music from 1958 through today.