skopiaBarry, Greenwich and Spector wrote it for Darlene Love in 1963; this 2004 cover stayed off streaming for seventeen years.
May and Taylor wrote it, Mercury sang it, and Queen waited until 2019 to give it a video.
Tommie Connor's 1952 novelty, recut by the Jacksons for Motown's Christmas album, and a Hot 100 hit in 2024.
Recorded alone in Sussex in the summer of 1979, every instrument McCartney's own, and a UK number six by January.
Nineteen eighty-seven, a Special Olympics benefit album, and Run-DMC turning Clarence Carter's Back Door Santa into a Queens carol.
Ray Davies cut it at Konk in 1977, a department store Santa mugged by kids who want jobs, not toys.
Bowie balked at the carol, so writers built the Peace on Earth counterpoint in an hour; Crosby died weeks later.
Recorded in June 1949 by a reluctant Autry, at his wife's urging, from a story written for a department store.
Cut live at C. W. Post College in 1975, shelved six years, then loosed on every December radio playlist since.
Recorded live with Henri René's orchestra in October 1953, and Kitt's purr makes every extravagant request land.
Millie Kirkham's soprano wailing over the Jordanaires at Radio Recorders, 1957, with Scotty Moore answering every line.
Two years after Lennon and Ono's billboards declared the war over, Spector cut it with a Harlem children's choir.
Cut at Gold Star in 1963, a commercial flop, then Love sang it for Letterman nearly every December until 2014.
Tormé and Wells wrote it in a July heat wave, thinking cool, and Cole overruled Capitol about the strings.
Two years in the making, with MacColl finally singing the woman's part, and it still stalled at number two.
Carey and Afanasieff wrote it fast in 1994 from Spector chords, and it reached number one twenty-five years later.
Berlin's snowless Christmas song, the best-selling physical single ever pressed, and the sound of every soldier's homesickness.