A Definitive Ranking of Pandora’s 28 Holiday Stations
Do you love holiday music? You must, because the radio business goes berserk with the genre this time every year, with hundreds of stations switching to all-holiday formats for the season.
Trouble is, they seem to play the same handful of tunes over and over — even as the variety of genre-hopping offerings keeps growing.
But in the digital-listening era you don’t have to settle for radio-style programming as your holiday soundtrack: You can zero in on a specific style of seasonal tunes. To wit: The popular music service Pandora offers a startling 28 genre-specific holiday-music stations.
We admire Pandora’s spirit of giving, but 28 choices may be a bit daunting. So to save you some trial and error, I have explored every single one of its options (listening to at least 10 songs on each station) and ranked them. No need to send a thank-you card, just read on.
The good
1. Jazz Holidays: Some people claim not to like — or just won’t admit that they’re slightly afraid of — jazz. But pair the genre with holiday music, and you’ll encounter no ponderous solos or hard-bop challenges to the notion of melody. I heard quality musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Clarke, and Jeanie Bryson offering familiar tunes (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “O Tannenbaum,” and so on) interpreted in fresh ways. It’s engaging but not overbearing, and I can’t imagine that any of your holiday guests will find it objectionable. And, let’s face it, minimizing potential argument-starters is what the holidays are all about.
2. Electronic Holidays: While slightly riskier, this was my personal favorite: classic performances remixed by modern DJs. I made several keeper discoveries: “Joy to the World” remixed by Mocean Worker, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo (Malibu Mix),” and a fantastic Q-Burns reworking of Johnny Mercer and the Pied Pipers performing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” It’s a fun, upbeat, surprising station.
3. Classical Christmas: In a way, this is similar to the jazz station, with slightly more variation in tone — from a big and brassy orchestral version of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” from Mannheim Steamroller to a quietly pretty “In the Bleak Midwinter” from the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers. In general this variety worked; only André Gagnon’s “White Christmas” veered too far into sappy-sentimental territory for my taste.
(That brings up an advantage that Pandora has over radio: While the service is designed to just chug along passively in the background, you can thumbs-down and instantly skip anything that makes you want to throw your Sonos speaker out the window.)
4. Hipster Holidays: Obviously this station has the most embarrassing name. But if you’re looking for an overtly contemporary mix, it isn’t bad. Highlights: the She & Him version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s take on a Charlie Brown Christmas highlight “Christmastime Is Here.” I could have lived without Death Cab for Cutie’s overwrought “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” and I was not happy to encounter two songs from celebrated alterna-bore Sufjan Stevens, but, again, tastes differ.
5. Rockin’ Holidays: I was looking forward to a holiday mix dominated by caterwauling guitars. But I forgot that rocking is very different from rockin’. The latter is a defanged version of the former, exemplified by Daryl Hall & John Oates performing “Jingle Bell Rock,” or the Brian Setzer Orchestra’s version of “Run Run Rudolph.” Still, Ray Charles singing “Winter Wonderland” is enjoyable even if it doesn’t remotely rock, and I don’t see how anybody could be against hearing the Ronettes perform “Sleigh Ride.” This mix does its job.
6. Christmas Choral Classics: A lot of holiday music is corny, silly, borderline novelty fare. Nothing wrong with that, but if you take Christmas seriously, this is your jam. Some of what I heard was almost hilariously portentous: “O Come All Ye Faithful,” from the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, for instance. Throw in a soaring orchestral version of “Gloria in D Major” and “Joy to the World,” alternating with gentle renditions of “The First Noel” and “O Holy Night,” and you get the idea.
7. 80s Christmas: Having experienced the 1980s firsthand, I have no nostalgia for that decade. But I can also say that this station did a pretty solid job of serving up exactly what I’m guessing ’80s enthusiasts crave: Wham!, Madonna, Springsteen, Band Aid. And I was impressed that “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses popped up, too. Oddly, however, my listen also included something by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and Burl Ives’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Not exactly the stuff of ’80s memories.
The acceptable
8. Christmas Blues: The pairing of the blues with the “happiest time of the year” is counterintuitive enough to be intriguing, but the reality was mixed. Stalwarts like B.B. King, Koko Taylor, and Lou Ann Barton popped up in my listen — all solid, but let’s face it, this is not their best material. I would question how Ray Charles’ version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and Eartha Kitt’s classic “Santa Baby” ended up on this station: Each was an enjoyable listen, but blues?
9. Country Christmas: If you’re into mainstream country, the artists who dominated this station as I listened to it ought to be up your alley: Brad Paisley, Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood, and so on. (Conversely, if you’re more into Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, I can’t report having heard anything here you’d much enjoy). As with the blues station, none of these artists are really at their best here, and I was surprised at how many took the slow-and-sappy route instead of opting for more up-tempo, celebratory numbers. Surely Toby Keith has never sounded more like a wimp than he does while warbling “The Christmas Song.”
10. Christmas Traditional: True mainstream holiday music traditionalists — who just can’t wait to hear “White Christmas” again — have plenty of choices on Pandora (as we’ll see below) but this one is probably the best. Bing Crosby, Perry Como, The Rat Pack: It’s all the stuff that’s being played on the radio. Which raises the question, “Why bother?” But it’s here if you want it.
11. Tropical Holidays: I had no idea what to expect when I clicked this station. And even after a long listen, I’m still not sure what to make of it. A calypso-style “Joy to the World,” a Hawaiian ukulele version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” a steel drum-driven “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”: Invitingly weird at first, the novelty quality grew tiresome. Especially the second time Jimmy Buffett appeared (sorry, Parrotheads). And in another Pandora anomaly, The Ventures’ “Frosty the Snowman” is fun, but not tropical.
12. Swingin’ Christmas: Here’s a station where the title strikes me as a head fake: A traditional arrangement of “White Christmas,” even with Dean Martin as the designated crooner, is not swingin’. Every third song or so — Lena Horne nailing “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” or the Glenn Miller Orchestra rolling through “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” — could pass muster as the cut-loose soundtrack to a drunken holiday party on Mad Men. But the energy level kept flagging, and I had to give up when I found myself listening to Perry Como sing “O Holy Night.” That, friends, is the antithesis of swingin’.
13. Navidad Boricua: Christmas is evidently a huge deal in Puerto Rico: “Celebrations run from November through mid-January with the city enjoying carols, feasting on roast pork and watching holiday fireworks,” CNN Travel notes. If you are Boricua (Puerto Rican) yourself, you may be familiar with the holiday music traditional to the island collected here — from my poking around in the comments left by Pandora listeners, they spark lots of happy memories for such people.
If you’re not conversant in, say, Gran Combo’s “La Fiesta de Pilito,” or Luis Alberto’s version of “Aires de Navidad,” well, the sing-along factor here is pretty low. On a pure musical level, it was fun to listen to this station, and it gave me an excuse to do some research on Puerto Rican Christmas traditions. But that’s not everybody’s idea of a party.
14. 70s Christmas: What went on in the 1970s, anyway? It’s hard to remember, and this station doesn’t help: We get the mandatory Carpenters, but somehow the mix goes from the Jackson 5 to John Lennon to Frank Sinatra to Elvis. There’s something here to appeal to everyone — but also something to alienate everyone. I was still struggling to identify the musical through-line when Andy Williams arrived to deliver “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Now I remember: The 1970s sorta sucked.
15. Navidad Latina: Much of what I said about the Navidad Boricua station applies here, but instead of Puerto Rico, the list draws from a broader range of Latin American songs. Again, most will be wholly unfamiliar to non-Spanish-speaking U.S. listeners. (One exception: Yes, Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” showed up.) Of course, listening to Christmas songs you don’t recognize, but that sound cool anyway, has its own contrarian appeal. But on that score I found the Boricua station a more enjoyable listen.
The borderline
16. Peaceful Holidays: This is the station for anybody who wants to take “nonintrusive” holiday music to the extreme: solo piano renditions of “O Holy Night” and “Silver Bells” practically run together, interrupted by bouts of solo guitar. That’s fine for households that observe a post-overeating afternoon nap as part of the holiday schedule. Otherwise, choose this list at your own risk … of nodding off.
17. Soulful Holidays: I am totally down with a definition of “soulful” that encompasses Otis Redding, The Isley Brothers, and a great version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by CeeLo Green. I am less down with a definition that also encompasses Boyz II Men and the cast of Glee. It’s possible that with vigorous attention to Pandora’s thumbs-up, thumbs-down ratings, this station could be shaped into a coherent and enjoyable sound, but in my listening it was annoyingly inconsistent, confusing truly soulful with the merely emotive.
(Pandora tip: If you’re running the free (ad-supported) version, there’s a limit to how many songs you can thumbs-down and skip. But you can also choose “I’m tired of this song,” and Pandora will “shelve” it for a while — probably the rest of the holiday season.)
18. Family Christmas: I figured this would be a station skewed toward energetic stuff that kids would like. There was some of that, but it really seemed more geared toward Christmas-music traditionalists in general: Sinatra doing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Carol of the Bells” performed by The Ambassadors of Harmony don’t strike me as bringing any uniquely “family” vibe to the proceedings. Stick with the Christmas Traditional station noted above.
19. Christmas: Much of the time, this uncreatively named station sounded just like the Christmas Traditional option. Exceptions involved Michael Bublé and Air Supply. Honestly Bublé’s voice sounds to me like it was crafted by an algorithm to achieve some synthetic blend of Sinatra, Crosby, Andy Williams, and Harry Connick Jr. If that’s your thing, fine, but even when I gave one Bublé performance a thumbs down, Pandora flung him back at me two songs later. Maybe his voice isn’t the product of an algorithm, but a thing specifically designed to thwart algorithms.
20. Gospel Christmas: I had high hopes for this, but the station was far slicker and more modern than I anticipated: Whitney Houston belting “Joy to the World,” a tepid “This Christmas” from Chris Brown, and so on. With occasional exceptions (“Now Behold the Lamb,” performed by Kirk Franklin & the Family) the selections sounded less like gospel than contemporary R&B. Plus, for reasons that I cannot explain: Kenny G’s version of “Little Drummer Boy.”
21. Hanukkah: Surely Pandora means well with this station. But there actually isn’t all that much Hanukkah music. Thus my listening here included “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah,” followed by “Happy Hanukkah,” a different version of “Happy Hanukkah,” “Oy Chanukah,” and “Chanukah, Oh Chanukah,” a run eventually broken up by the crazy wildcard, “I Have a Little Dreidel!” (performed by Barenaked Ladies). The highlight was a good bluegrass take on “Hava Nagila,” which isn’t actually a Hanukkah song, but is at least celebratory (the title roughly means “Let’s Rejoice”). I’m having a harder time figuring out how “Sunrise, Sunset,” from Fiddler on the Roof ended up here.
The dubious
22. Smooth Jazz Christmas: Well, I certainly hadn’t thought of Spyro Gyra in a long time. I think this station would be of most interest to genuine hipsters, listening to it ironically for snatches of exquisitely cheesy sax solos. Anybody else should just opt for the Jazz Holiday station at the top of this list.
23. Celtic Holidays: If Celtic music calls to mind exuberant bagpipes and whirling jigs, you might think this station could be an adventurous change of pace for your holiday celebration soundscape. But with a few exceptions, it turned out to be practically a New Age station — quiet guitar, quiet piano, quiet guitar again. And that’s before I even got to the Enya version of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Unless you seek a somnambulant little Christmas, skip this.
24. R&B and Pop Holidays: Easily the most incoherent station, this mix whipsawed from Mariah Carey to the inescapable Bublé to Brenda Lee’s familiar “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” That was confusing enough, but then came Ariana Grande’s pointless cover of “Santa Baby,” and a really unconvincing Leon Redbone and Zooey Deschanel take on “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Puzzling.
25. Christian Contemporary Holidays: While I’m not a fan of this genre, I understand how it might serve as musical shelter from the often-profane world of pop. But there’s no great need to avoid popular holiday music — these are the same songs you can hear being performed by the best musicians in every conceivable genre. Explore! At least try the Christmas Choral Classics station cited above.
26. Folk Holidays: “Folk,” to me, calls to mind Pete Seeger or Joan Baez. But this turned out to be another New Age station in disguise: again with the tinkling solo piano, solo guitar, even solo harp. Is there latent demand for holiday sleepy-time music? Isn’t this supposed to be a season of joy? The only up-tempo number was “Joy to the World,” from an album called Mountain Top Bluegrass Gospel Christmas — and, as that title suggests, it also didn’t sound like folk.
27. 90s Christmas: Remember boy bands? Wish you didn’t? Steer clear of this station, then, because it turns out they all recorded holiday music. I would recommend this mix only to true 1990s fanatics, and would do so mostly to make the explicit challenge: Please tell me what’s cool about Jimmy Eat World covering “Last Christmas” (the Wham! song) or the Smashing Pumpkins discovering their inner wuss in a version of “Christmastime.”
28. Today’s Christmas: “Today” is a nebulous concept, as this playlist demonstrates. Every single selection I heard was of course a classic from some past age performed with a nearly identical arrangement, but by some contemporary artist, from Lady Antebellum to Mariah Carey. Most made me long to hear the originals — or to hear something authentically new.
If I’m sounding more and more Grinchy as I get to the end of this list, remember I’ve given you my recommendations above. And if you disagree with everything I’ve said here, well, let’s not fight about it. It’s the holidays. Happy listening.
Write to me at rwalkeryn@yahoo.com or find me on Twitter, @notrobwalker. RSS lover? Paste this URL into your reader of choice: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/author/rob-walker/rss.
