Which Christmas songs should a cover band add for December?
A short list you can play properly, chosen from more than one style, because December bookings vary: an office party wants rock and pop, a dinner wants crooner standards, a family event wants carols, and the last night of the year needs its own plan for midnight. The 31 titles below are grouped that way. Most are British or American recordings. One is from the Philippines and one is from Australia.
The notes under "Where it fits" are our suggestions for where a song can sit in a set. They are not facts about the song, and the list is not a ranking or a measure of popularity. Titles, artists and years were checked against MusicBrainz or Wikipedia when this page was written. We list no keys or tempos, because bands change both.
Rock and pop Christmas songs
| Song | Artist | Year | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jingle Bell Rock | Bobby Helms | 1957 | Light swing for a first festive slot |
| Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree | Brenda Lee | 1958 | Short jive for mixed ages |
| Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) | Darlene Love | 1963 | Big vocal to lift set two |
| Happy Xmas (War Is Over) | John Lennon and Yoko Ono | 1971 | Slow sway near the end |
| Merry Xmas Everybody | Slade | 1973 | Loud encore for a British room |
| I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday | Wizzard | 1973 | Pairs with the Slade song |
| Last Christmas | Wham! | 1984 | Mid-tempo, early in the night |
| Merry Christmas Everyone | Shakin' Stevens | 1985 | Easy shuffle for an office party |
| Fairytale of New York | The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl | 1987 | Needs two voices; late on |
| Christmas in Our Hearts | Jose Mari Chan | 1990 | One for a Filipino crowd |
| All I Want for Christmas Is You | Mariah Carey | 1994 | Peak of the dance set |
| How to Make Gravy | Paul Kelly | 1996 | Listening moment in an Australian room |
Crooner standards
| Song | Artist | Year | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| White Christmas | Bing Crosby | 1942 | Dinner set or last slow dance |
| Santa Baby | Eartha Kitt | 1953 | Cabaret spot for one singer |
| Blue Christmas | Elvis Presley | 1957 | Slow one for the Elvis fans |
| Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! | Dean Martin | 1959 | Swing feel while guests arrive |
| The Christmas Song | Nat King Cole | 1961 | Quiet background during the meal |
| It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year | Andy Williams | 1963 | Bright opener for a festive slot |
Carols a crowd joins in on
| Song | Artist | Year | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hark! The Herald Angels Sing | Traditional | 1739 | Full-voiced carol for a seated room |
| O Come, All Ye Faithful | Traditional | 1751 | Closing carol before the break |
| Silent Night | Traditional | 1833 | Quietest moment; drop the drums |
| Jingle Bells | Traditional | 1857 | Speed it up; children join in |
| Deck the Halls | Traditional | 1862 | Short link between two songs |
| Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer | Gene Autry | 1949 | For family gigs with children |
| Feliz Navidad | José Feliciano | 1970 | Whole room joins; easy to extend |
For the rows marked Traditional, the year is when the carol was first published in print, in the form sung today where sources separate the two. No single recording stands for these.
New Year's Eve and midnight
| Song | Artist | Year | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auld Lang Syne | Traditional | 1799 | Straight after the countdown |
| Celebration | Kool & the Gang | 1980 | Dance song to follow midnight |
| Happy New Year | ABBA | 1980 | Slow sway once the cheering settles |
| 1999 | Prince | 1982 | Party song in the final hour |
| New Year's Day | U2 | 1983 | For a rock crowd after midnight |
| The Final Countdown | Europe | 1986 | Last song before the countdown |
Start a setlist with these 31 songs
Opens StageFloww with the titles typed in. Free plan, no card. Search can miss a song, and you can add it by hand.
Where do the festive songs go in a normal party set?
Nowhere near all of them go in. A December gig is your ordinary set with a few slots given over to the season, so the order below marks the slots and leaves the rest to the songs your band already plays. It covers two sets and uses seven festive titles.
This running order is one suggestion built from the list above. Change it to suit your band and the room.
- Your usual opener
- Festive slot: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
- Three songs from your usual set
- Festive slot: Jingle Bell Rock, then Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
- Three songs from your usual set
- Festive slot: Last Christmas
- Your usual closer for set one, then the break
- Your usual opener for set two
- Four songs from your usual dance set
- Festive slot: All I Want for Christmas Is You
- Two songs from your usual set
- Festive slot: Fairytale of New York
- Your usual last song
- Encore: Merry Xmas Everybody
On New Year's Eve, drop most of those slots and plan backwards from twelve o'clock: The Final Countdown, the countdown itself, Auld Lang Syne, then Celebration.
How many festive songs can one set take?
Our rule of thumb is roughly one song in five, and never more than two in a row. Past that, the night stops being a party with a seasonal flavour and becomes a Christmas show, which is a different booking.
Three things move the number:
- The date. In the first week of December people are fresh to it. By the week before Christmas they have heard the same recordings in shops for a month, and a little goes further.
- The client. An office party organiser may want more than a pub landlord does. Ask when you confirm the booking, and ask whether anything is off the list.
- The room. Carols need people who are seated and willing. Leave them out of a late dance set.
Keep a couple of festive spares outside the order for a guest who asks. Our guide to taking song requests at a gig explains how to swap a song in without running over.
When should a band start rehearsing Christmas songs?
In October. These songs are played for four or five weeks a year, so nobody has them under their fingers, and the crooner standards tend to move through more chords than a party set does. A band that leaves them until the week of the first booking plays them from memory of last year.
Choose six to eight songs and learn those well. Agree the singer's key for each one again, because voices change in a year. Decide each ending, since a record can fade out and a band cannot. Then keep the charts and the order somewhere you will find them next autumn.
What does StageFloww do for a December set, and what is left to you?
StageFloww, the setlist and stage-lyrics app, is a place to keep that order from one year to the next. In the setlist builder a finished running order can be saved as a template, each song has a notes field for its agreed ending, and labels mark the opener and the encore. The builder shows the total minutes. A December set built from your usual songs plus these slots fits the Free plan, which allows 40 songs per setlist.
Use song search to add the titles. It needs a connection and can miss a song, older carols included, so add them well before the gig.
StageFloww does not rank songs or decide how festive a night should be, and it does not play backing tracks or a countdown. To see how many songs two sets hold, open the set length calculator. The page on StageFloww for cover bands describes how the band follows the order together.