WMNR Fine Arts Radio

Based on extensive work by Record Research, Inc., the 30 most recorded pop Christmas songs are counted down.

If you're familiar with Joel Whitburn's Record Research, Inc., and their decades of analyzing pop, rock and soul Billboard chart performance, then you know this is the recognized authority. For this Top-30 Christmas Countdown, the team at Record Research took all the albums that have ever charted on the Christmas Charts through 2004, and they painstakingly looked at the titles on all those albums. By tracking the titles and the number of times they appeared, the list was compiled. In this program we do not include Christmas Carols, just secular songs on the list associated with the Christmas season.

You can probably guess many titles on the countdown. The artists that record them, however, are extremely varied. They range from classics like Perry Como to Euro-sound Boney M and all points between. And worth noting, the older the song the more times it is likely to have been recorded. Take a song like Santa Claus Is Coming To Town or Winter Wonderland, both written in the 1934, and you can see they have a better chance of being high on the list simply because they were around for 70 years, and recorded hundreds of times, when this list was made.

For the record, Silent Night is the most recorded Christmas song ever, if not the most recorded song of all in any genre, period. Considered a Christmas carol, however, it is not on this countdown. For that matter, neither is Joy To The World, O Holy Night or any other carols we love.

Get ready to count down the top-30 pop Christmas songs of all time, with three "countdown extras" (indicated by Xtra) included for the fun of it. Merry Christmas.

Garrett Stack