Power Pop The Holidays!
Updated Playlist Featuring 40 Sensational Seasonal Songs
The Beatles did it (several times) so that’s reason enough for any guitar pop band worth their yuletide FireGlo Rickenbackers to record a holiday song.
“Between 1963 and 1969, The Beatles sent limited-edition Christmas singles to paid-up members of their fan club. Consisting of wordplay-laden spoken messages, surreal skits and snatches of original songs, these ultra-rare plastic ‘flexidisc’ records existed in a hazy area between bootlegs and legitimate, if tough to find, releases,” Jordan Runtagh wrote in Beatles’ Rare Fan-Club Christmas Records: A Complete Guide for Rolling Stone in 2020.
“These low-stakes sessions emboldened them to experiment, sometimes inspiring ideas that would later appear on their better-known work. Even when they’re not pushing the artistic envelope, their eccentric humor, heavily influenced by British radio comedy collective the Goons, remains as funny now as it was half a century earlier.”
Plenty of other guitar pop bands before and after the Fab Four have gotten in on the holiday action over the decades.
The Beach Boys gave us the seasonal favorite “Little St. Nick” while The Kinks delivered something decidedly darker with “Father Christmas.” It’s almost impossible to escape The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” this time of year, and annual debates about the plusses and minuses of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” are right up there with family political discussions around the dinner table.
The updated 2025 playlist below includes a few of those tracks, but spreads it’s angelic wings even further to include tracks that you aren’t likely to hear while scouring the mall for last minute gifts. (Even my band The Brothers Steve got in on the holiday music action; see “I Love The Christmastime” down near the bottom of the list.)
A few of these songs are more rare than a Santa sighting on Christmas Eve, but there’s definitely something here for even the Scroogiest guitar pop purists. So click around until you hear something that makes your bells jingle. It only takes a few new discoveries to give your playlists a little more POP this holiday season.
What holiday power pop songs would you add?
If Spotify Seems Like The Grinch…
⚡️My Music Books Make Great Gifts💥
https://open.spotify.com/track/6WWbaHAH8ZvRaH1ldX5s1W?si=lcbERe8STF6l-hKCooRUwQ 🎅
You can't walk in a store in December without hearing Paul McCartney's Christmas music.