Ken Tucker

It's got some lovely ballads infused with snow and sentiment.

It's got a couple of novelty tunes, such as one about a naughty elf on a shelf.

He covers traditional songs such as Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Christmas carols like Oh Holy Night.

My favorite new song on this album is this warm, pretty composition called Falling Just Like the Snow.

It's a cheerful bunch of songs.

You can hear Guyton smile as she sings them.

One standout is the song Sugar Cookie, which is arranged to sound like a sweet bit of Motown pop from decades past.

Sugar Cookie is a new song that arrives with built-in nostalgia.

The R&B singer Leon Bridges has released an enigmatic holiday track, a tune called A Merry Black Christmas.

It's a rueful variation on the Irving Berlin classic White Christmas.

Remember the line about a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know?

Here, it becomes a black Christmas just like the one I've never had before.

His gravelly croon lends a certain melancholy to the beauty that Leon Bridges summons up here.

We will end with Old Crow Medicine Show, thinking about the day after Christmas.

This jaunty Nashville-based string band has a clever original song called December 26th.

Whether you're anxiously awaiting Christmas or already wishing the holidays would be over, here's a lot of music that lets you know you're not alone.

Runnin' and searchin', fallin' fine

I

Valerie June deserves a much bigger audience.

Fifty years on, Patti Smith's Horses still sounds like nothing else before or since its arrival in 1975.