New Christmas Music Released In 2025 Review: Our Verdict On New Festive Songs

As the countdown to Christmas is officially underway, many of us will now be falling back on some of our old festive favourites to get us in the seasonal spirits.

However, if you’re a little tired of the same old musical offerings year in, year out, we’re happy to report that some big names have been hard at work to get us some new original festive tunes for 2025.

With that in mind, we’ve rounded up some of the year’s biggest new Christmas releases from some of the most popular artists in music (not to mention a few surprise figures getting involved, too).

Here are our thoughts on this year’s biggest original new Christmas musical releases…

For the last few years, Amazon Music’s exclusive festive tracks have spelled out chart success for artists including Ellie Goulding, Tom Grennan and Sam Ryder, and this year, it’s Kylie Minogue who’s done a deal with the music platform.

Released to coincide with the 10-years anniversary of her hit-and-miss seasonal album (titled simply Christmas), Kylie’s new release for 2025 is an original song called XMAS, which you can look forward to coming out of any Alexa you’re in the vicinity of between now and New Year’s Day.

On one hand, XMAS is a nice enough – though still pretty naff – festive ditty that will no doubt particularly appeal to little ones (which, if nothing else, is great news for anyone keen to introduce Kylie’s back catalogue to any younger family members you’re spending the Christmas period with), leaning into trends laid out in recent hits for acts like Bruno Mars and Chappell Roan, complete with its own TikTok dance.

At the same time, though, it’s tough to reckon this Kylie – who has arguably never pandered this hard in pursuit of a chart hit – with the woman riding a wave of credibility and a sudden chart resurgence just two years ago off the back of Padam Padam, a song people loved and which left the biggest cultural footprint in decades for the Australian star precisely because it didn’t sound like it was put together in a board meeting…

As plenty of artists have discovered over the years, there’s simply no way of doing a Christmas song while retaining any sense of cool, so the Jonas Brothers wisely decided to lean into the cheesier side of the festive season with this 80s pastiche – complete with a soaring key change and even a saxophone solo from Kenny G himself.

On paper, it’s a pretty straight-forward seasonal love song, but what sets Coming Home From Christmas apart are its musical quirks, like its syncopated rhythms and the tight vocals from the brothers showcased on the chorus.

Catchy without being grating, Coming Home This Christmas might just surprise you with how much of an earworm it is (full disclosure, every time we think we’re done listening to it, we can’t help putting it right back to the beginning again).

And who doesn’t love a romantic lyric about that last-minute dash home just in time for Christmas…?

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

Gwen Stefani has become something of a low-key Christmas queen since her first full-length festive album You Make It Feel Like Christmas came out in 2017.

In the years that followed, she’s re-issued it no fewer than three times, keeping the original festive tunes coming – including a select few we have on regular rotation at this time of year.

Like many of her peers, the former No Doubt has embraced a 1950s rock ‘n’ roll sound for her latest Yuletide offering Hot Cocoa, which lyrically consists of her reeling off iconic festive duos to lay out how meant to be together she and her sweetheart are (“Like Santa Claus and chimneys, like Rudolph and his nose, like Christmas trees topped with an angel, kisses and mistletoе”).

Unfortunately, this one doesn’t quite hit for us – the listing of various Christmas clichés wears thin by the end, and we’re not really convinced the repetition of “you and me we’re just like hot cocoa, hot cocoa and marshmallows” trips off the tongue in the way you’d want for a festive tune.

Still, Gwen has proved in the past that she has some very effective Christmas songs in her repertoire, so we’re sure she’ll nail it whenever re-issue number five might be rolling around…

Like Gwen, country superstar Mickey Guyton is embracing the sweeter side of Christmas on her own 1950s-sounding release Sugar Cookie.

With cheeky lyrics about getting cosy around the fire with someone special who “keeps me warm when it’s cold outside” and a catchy chorus, the real star of the song is Mickey’s absolutely belting vocals which, at the very least, should make Sugar Cookie a fun one to try and sing along to while you’re decorating the tree or preparing Christmas dinner.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

If you’re a fan of Kelly Clarkson’s Christmas output, then Lady A’s Wouldn’t Be Christmas is one we think you’re going to like (particularly while the former American Idol winner is having one of her releasing new Christmas music fallow years in 2025).

Let’s be clear, Wouldn’t Be Christmas is not reinventing the wheel – in fact you can cross pretty much every festive cliché off your bingo card whether that’s a bouncy piano intro, sweet lyrics about being with the one you love over Christmas or some unmissable sleigh bells in the percussion section. But at this time of year, who’s honestly in the mood for all that?

So, if all you’re in need of is a three-minute gap on your festive playlist, Lady A’s charming Yuletide toe-tapper is sure to fit the bill – and with this much replay value you might also find yourself being charmed by it, too.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

We can’t deny it, we love it when people get a bit emo at Christmas. Last year, we had Bleachers, before that there was Sam Smith, and as far as we’re concerned, no festive playlist is complete without Hurts’ brooding All I Want For Christmas Is New Year’s Day.

This year’s moodiest new Christmas tune comes from Sunderland-born indie rockers The Futureheads (yes, they of Hounds Of Love fame from back in the day), with an almost gothic-sounding ballad accompanied by just a sparse organ that sounds more like it belongs in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights than nestled between the likes of Wham! and Mariah Carey.

Admittedly, this isn’t exactly going to be a festive crowd-pleaser while you’re tucking into your turkey, but given how easy it would be for The Futureheads to give an old Wizzard or Slade Christmas tune the Hounds Of Love treatment and call it a day, we have to applaud the band for taking a risk with this unorthodox offering.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

In 2025, Meghan Trainor is re-embracing the sound that first pushed her to global stardom – and she’s doing it with a Christmas twist.

By that, we mean that if the horn-heavy sounds of tunes like Dear Future Husband or All About That Bass had you reaching for the “skip” button when Grammy winner Meghan first burst onto the scene in the mid-2010s, we don’t think Gifts For Me is going to do much to change your mind.

That said, it’s a fun-friendly song we imagine kids will love – and we have to applaud Meghan for putting out an independence anthem over Christmas, at a time when the airwaves are largely dominated by songs about happy relationships or, indeed, seasonal heartbreak.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

Alright, own up – who had a punk pop song from Jojo Siwa opening with a reimagined version of Little Drummer Boy and ending on a call for world peace at Christmas?

When you lay it out like that, Message To The World (Little Drummer Girl) does sound a little preposterous… but to be honest, if you take the Jojo Siwa-ness of it all out of the occasion, there are plenty of artists who could release this anthemic and Avril Lavigne-esque new take on the Christmas single without anyone batting an eye.

And to be quite honest with you… it kind of slaps.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

After becoming the darling of the Brat crowd in 2025, it was surely only ever going to be a matter of time before Denise Welch tried her hand at a hyperpop song of her own – but what we couldn’t have predicted was that it would double up as a new Christmas tune.

Slayyy Bells (naturally) is a collaboration between the Loose Women star and Celebrations, aiming to remind those suffering from “festive fatigue” that they have the power to switch things up and do Christmas their own way if they so wish.

Is Slayyy Bells “good”? No, obviously not. But is it enjoyable? To be honest, yes. We know Denise Welch x Celebrations probably isn’t the magic formula to any Ivor Novellos, but watching Denzy enjoying herself – mixed with genuinely-funny lyrics like “who’s to say it’s turkey? Geordies love roast ham like mad… and guess who always cooks it? Why, my ex, my boys’s dad” – makes for a better time than some by-the-numbers Christmas cover or a sleigh-bell-ified ballad Chat GPT could probably knock together in minutes.

Our verdict: 🎄🎄🎄