Holiday Music Is Reportedly Getting Sadder: What Does it Say About Today’s Artists and Listeners

It’s important to state right away that Christmas – or holiday music more broadly – has never been entirely uniform in Western culture. Sure, there are plenty of cheery tracks that celebrate the season and highlight its joyful, heartwarming moments – whether that’s spending time with loved ones, kissing under the mistletoe (with the one you’ve wanted all year), or simply admiring the festive, winter atmosphere.

However, alongside these cheerful melodies, there are many melancholic, nostalgic, and gloomy holiday songs – both old and modern – that explore themes such as sadness, loneliness, longing, wishful thinking, grief, and “broken hearts.” Some tracks may even sound like jolly pop bops on the surface, but are blue at their core.

Take, for instance, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love. Its infectious melody encourages listeners to dance, yet the lyrics tell the story of someone longing for their loved one to return home for the holidays. Or consider Joni Mitchell’s River, which outlines the aftermath of a breakup, with the narrator (presumably the singer) wishing she could “skate away” from the pain on a frozen river.

Phoebe Bridgers’ beautiful but heart-wrenching Christmas Song goes as far as to say, “This winter's so dry and the dirt road so dusty / at the lightest fall of rain, the bacteria bloom,” and “the sadness comes crashing like a brick through the window / and it's Christmas so no one can fix it.”

Even the classic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from the 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis, performed by Judy Garland, originally included much darker lines: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past.”

Bridgers and Musgraves are just a few examples of the many contemporary artists who have been leaning toward somber, sad-themed holiday music – often centred on failed love or broken romantic relationships.

In his 2024 song "December 25th," Charlie Puth dives into the longing that comes with being separated from someone he loves (or loved) on Christmas. Coldplay’s Christmas Lights also reflects on past relationships during the holiday season. A similar narrative appears in the 2024 song Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call by Bleachers, which mourns betrayal in a relationship.

Songs like For Those Who Can’t Be Here by Tom Walker (2023) or The Heartache Can Wait by Brandi Carlile (2017), on the other hand, explore themes of grief and loss. And the list of sad holiday music goes on.

A recent Chartmetric report, published in a Digital Music News article, has revealed that melancholic holiday music is not only being produced but also listened to heavily. The data show that tracks tagged with moods such as “lonely,” “heartbroken,” “melancholic,” “sad,” and “longing” have consistently been on the rise in major holiday playlists between 2021 and 2024.

While joyous holiday classics remain vastly popular among listeners, sad Christmas songs – particularly contemporary ones – appear to be becoming increasingly dominant on music charts.

Looking at Phoebe Bridgers' 2020 somber recording If We Make It Through December (originally by Merle Haggard) and 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night (originally by Simon & Garfunkel), the report shows that in November alone, the former averaged over 20K additional daily streams on Spotify, reaching 16M streams by December 2025. The latter has also seen notable growth, generating 6.7M streams between 2020 and 2025.

Now, of course, a higher stream count alone doesn’t conclusively prove that wistful holiday music is growing in popularity. However, the report presents further indicators supporting this trend.

For example, Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2020 song It’s Not Christmas ‘Til Somebody Cries has an editorial playlist reach of over 462K on Spotify. Meanwhile, Sabrina Carpenter’s 2023 slow-tempo pop ballad santa doesn’t know you like i do is currently featured on a total of 18 Spotify editorial playlists.

Ed Sheeran’s emotional single Under the Tree, from the 2024 animated movie That Christmas, has also been gaining significant traction. In November 2025 alone, its video attracted more than 3.8M new views on YouTube.

It’s not only individual songs that are rising in popularity across streaming platforms – melancholic editorial playlists are as well. For instance, Spotify’s “Folksy Christmas” grew from 4,252 followers in 2019 to 127.7K today. Similarly, the “sad christmas” playlist reached over 28.8K followers in November 2025, up from a mere 5K in 2021.

Perhaps most telling is the growing concentration of songs with – one might say – unfestive moods on “Christmas Hits”, Spotify’s presumably most popular holiday playlist with 7.2M followers. While in 2020 the playlist contained no songs with melancholic mood tags, in 2025 these songs make up 40% of the playlist.

The long-standing presence and rising popularity of sad, moody holiday music are no coincidence. The reality is that, as much as we want to paint the holidays as “merry and bright,” the season is strongly associated with nostalgia, which can trigger feelings of sadness and melancholy. What’s more, many of these songs are inspired by real-life experiences and tragedies – and are more relatable for the listener than the purely joyous tracks.

According to a 2018 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 64% of people reported being affected by the holiday blues. In a UK survey conducted in 2019, three in ten people said they felt anxious around the holidays, with a quarter feeling depressed.

“It feels like we’re supposed to be happy during the holidays, but sometimes they just make you really sad. So, I wrote this song for anybody who might be feeling a little bit lonely,” said singer Kacey Musgraves about her 2019 Christmas Makes Me Cry track.

As a 2024 study by University College London (UCL) found, sad Christmas songs can actually help listeners cope with loneliness, stress, and the “festive blues.” This phenomenon is called the tragedy paradox.

“…One of the ideas about what’s going on there is that you kind of have this sense, number one, of validation of what you’re feeling. And number two, that it’s a shared thing that other people experience, too. And you’re not the only one having that experience,” explains Dr. Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University.