Something odd happened to Christmas jazz over the past five years. A 25-year-old Icelandic artist named Laufey started selling out arenas full of Gen Z fans who scream along to songs built on ii-V-I progressions.
Jacob Collier reharmonised “White Christmas” using microtonal theory that would make Schoenberg proud, and it went viral. Vinyl sales of A Charlie Brown Christmas outpaced streaming in some weeks.
Bill Murray showed up in a Christmas jazz music video featuring ballet dancers.
None of this should work according to conventional music industry wisdom. Jazz is supposedly dying. Young people allegedly have short attention spans.
Christmas music means Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé doing the same songs everyone’s heard a thousand times.
Except that’s not what’s actually happening. Christmas jazz found new life by ignoring what it was supposed to be and focusing on what it could become.
Who’s Actually Making This Music
Laufey (pronounced lay-vay) shouldn’t exist according to music industry logic. She’s 25, Icelandic-Chinese, plays cello and piano, writes songs with jazz chord progressions, and somehow convinced Gen Z that this is exactly what they want to hear.
Her Christmas single “Santa Baby” dropped in November 2024 with a music video starring Bill Murray and professional ballet dancers. It didn’t feel like a gimmick. It felt like Christmas jazz finally figured out how to speak to people born after 2000.
Here’s what makes her approach work: she never dumbed anything down. The arrangements on her Christmas tracks use actual jazz musicians playing sophisticated harmonies.
Her lyrics address contemporary relationships and emotions. The production values match anything from mainstream pop.
She’s not making “jazz for people who don’t like jazz.” She’s making jazz that young people recognise as theirs.
She started A Very Laufey Holiday in 2021 with “Love to Keep Me Warm” featuring dodie. Then “The Christmas Waltz” in 2022. “Christmas Dreaming” in 2023.
Each year, another track. Each release becomes an event her fans anticipate like tradition. It’s the opposite of how Christmas music usually works (record one album, tour it forever). Instead, she builds catalogue gradually while staying relevant every December.
The Norah Jones collaboration in 2023 mattered more than it seemed at first. They recorded “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” plus an original called “Better Than Snow.” That validated Laufey to older jazz listeners who might’ve dismissed her as TikTok novelty. It also introduced Jones’ audience to someone they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Cross-generational respect, executed perfectly.
Her 2023 album Bewitched became the first to top both Billboard’s jazz and traditional jazz charts simultaneously in its debut week. That’s not just commercial success. That’s proof you can make real jazz that connects with contemporary audiences when you stop assuming they won’t understand it.
Jacob Collier occupies different territory entirely. The 31-year-old British multi-instrumentalist treats Christmas standards like mathematical puzzles he can solve with increasingly complex harmonies. His 2016 arrangement of “White Christmas” for Pentatonix won awards and demonstrated something useful: you can completely reharmonise a song everyone knows without destroying what makes it work.
Collier’s approach to music borders on obsessive. He invented his own scale (the “Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-Meta-Lydian,” which sounds like a joke but isn’t) and works with microtones most musicians don’t even think about. Yet his “White Christmas” proves all that harmonic complexity can enhance rather than obscure a melody. The tune stays recognisable. The emotion remains intact. He just showed you fifty chord possibilities you didn’t know existed between point A and point B.
The educational aspect matters here. Younger musicians follow Collier’s work closely, studying his arrangements like textbooks. He posts breakdowns of his creative process on social media, explaining choices and inviting audiences into technical details. That transparency builds engagement traditional jazz marketing never achieved. When fans understand how something works, they engage differently than passive listeners.
His six Grammy Awards (first British artist to win for his first four albums) legitimise experimental approaches within mainstream contexts. More importantly, he’s proved audiences will embrace complexity when it’s presented with genuine enthusiasm rather than academic superiority. He doesn’t talk down. He shares what excites him and trusts people to keep up.
Then there’s everyone operating between Laufey’s accessibility and Collier’s experimentalism. Michael Bublé’s 2011 Christmas album sold 18 million copies by pairing big band swing with contemporary production. Gregory Porter brings gospel-soaked baritone to standards with Christmas Wish (2023), his voice channelling Ray Charles while arrangements nod equally toward soul and straight-ahead jazz. Norah Jones keeps everything understated and intimate, recording collaborations that emphasise interpretation over technical display.
These artists get dismissed by jazz purists for being “too commercial,” which misses how they actually function. Someone discovers Christmas jazz through Bublé’s radio-friendly approach, gets curious, finds their way to Count Basie, then Vince Guaraldi, eventually lands on Thelonious Monk. The gateway matters because it leads somewhere. Not everyone starts at the deep end.
Underground innovators push different boundaries. Saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin brings soul-jazz intensity that makes holiday standards feel urgent rather than comfortable. Darius de Haas infuses Broadway’s theatrical sophistication into arrangements that demand attention rather than providing background. Kevin Brown’s 2025 album Adventus draws on Medieval liturgical music, creating atmospheric sacred jazz specifically for Advent’s contemplative weeks before Christmas arrives.
These artists aren’t chasing maximum commercial appeal. They’re pursuing artistic visions that might only reach dedicated listeners willing to engage seriously. That creative freedom produces the genre’s most interesting work, even when financial returns stay modest. Innovation happens here first. Mainstream artists adopt these techniques years later, usually without credit.
How People Actually Find This Music Now
Spotify changed everything about discovery. Someone searches “cosy Christmas jazz piano” and gets curated playlists mixing Vince Guaraldi with artists they’ve never heard of. Algorithms introduce music based on mood rather than artist name or album title. That shift favours musicians who understand search optimisation and playlist positioning over traditional marketing budgets.
The economics stay complicated. Streaming pays fractions of pennies per play. Christmas music concentrates all its listening into six weeks annually, limiting revenue. Artists respond by releasing singles instead of albums, building catalogues track-by-track rather than complete statements. Changes how Christmas jazz develops. Immediate hooks matter more than album-length artistic visions.
But streaming provides unprecedented access. Someone in rural Australia discovers an Icelandic Christmas jazz artist as easily as someone in London. Geographic barriers collapsed. A bedroom musician in Reykjavik can reach global audiences without label backing or distribution deals.
Then there’s vinyl’s weird resurrection. Gen Z and Millennials are buying Christmas jazz on actual records. Not ironically. Not as novelty gifts. As their preferred format.
A Charlie Brown Christmas sold over 11,000 vinyl copies in a single week during December 2020. That accounted for most of that week’s 14,000 total sales. Independent labels press small runs specifically for collectors who’ll pay £30-40 for limited editions. Blue Note’s Tone Poet subscription service curates monthly audiophile jazz reissues on 180-gram vinyl, mastered from original tapes. They sell out within hours.
The appeal isn’t just nostalgia. Vinyl provides physicality in increasingly dematerialised culture. You can hold it, display it, gift it properly. The ritual of needle-on-record creates intentional listening absent from Spotify’s background soundtrack approach. Some claim sound quality superiority (analog warmth versus digital compression), though arguments get technical fast. Mostly, people want objects again.
YouTube and TikTok changed discovery differently than audio streaming. Video platforms demand visual presentation alongside musical skill. Jacob Collier built his career through split-screen multi-instrumental performances on YouTube. Laufey reached Gen Z through TikTok before releasing her first album. Strong lighting, camera presence, aesthetic coherence, these matter now as much as instrumental ability.
Christmas lends itself to visual treatment naturally: decorated spaces, winter imagery, nostalgic aesthetics. Laufey’s “Santa Baby” video used ballet, elaborate sets, and Bill Murray to create something shareable beyond typical music video treatment. Production values rivalled big-budget pop while musical content stayed distinctly jazz.
TikTok specifically shapes how young audiences find Christmas jazz. The platform favours 15-60 second clips. Artists who distil their music into compelling hooks succeed. Some worry this trains audiences for attention spans incompatible with jazz’s improvisational nature. Others argue it provides perfect teasers leading interested listeners toward full recordings. Both perspectives have merit.
You might also like:
- Essential Christmas Jazz Songs and Their Stories
- Creating the Perfect Christmas Jazz Playlist
- Classic and Contemporary Christmas Jazz Albums
- Unwrapping Laufey’s Santa Baby: Bill Murray’s Festive Cameo, Jazz Vibes, and Ballet Twists
- 25 Modern Jazz Artists You Need to Hear in 2023
- The History and Evolution of Jazz Music
What’s Actually Changing
Genre boundaries mean less to younger artists than their predecessors. Modern Christmas jazz incorporates R&B, neo-soul, indie pop, and electronic elements without apology or explanation. Artists who grew up with genre-agnostic Spotify playlists don’t recognise the boundaries older generations policed. They use jazz’s harmonic sophistication alongside whatever else serves their vision.
Purists complain this dilutes jazz’s essence. The same argument happened with fusion in the 70s, smooth jazz in the 80s, acid jazz in the 90s. Each generation’s radicalism becomes the next generation’s foundation. The cycle continues.
Collaboration replaced competition as primary strategy. Laufey works with Norah Jones. Darius de Haas teams with Broadway orchestrators. Lakecia Benjamin records with Grammy-nominated vocalists. These partnerships validate emerging artists through established names, introduce younger musicians to older fanbases, and create musical conversations impossible otherwise.
Social media enables these collaborations directly. Artists connect through Instagram and TikTok without industry intermediaries. Projects happen faster. The infrastructure supporting jazz remains limited; partnerships provide mutual marketing and creative stimulation while sharing costs.
Authenticity trumps perfection in ways previous generations wouldn’t recognise. Studio technology enables flawless performances. Auto-tune corrects pitch. Digital editing fixes mistakes. Yet modern Christmas jazz increasingly rejects polish in favour of performances emphasising human imperfection.
Listen to Laufey’s recordings closely. You’ll hear breath sounds, slight timing variations, dynamic fluctuations modern production usually eliminates. Those “flaws” create intimacy sterile perfection loses. Gen Z responds more positively to audible humanity than technical perfection. They grew up with highly polished pop; imperfection signals authenticity.
The annual single replaced the career-defining album. Traditional Christmas jazz operated on one album per artist that toured for decades. Modern economics favour different approaches. Release one Christmas track annually, build catalogue over time, maintain yearly relevance. Laufey pioneered this, releasing singles every December since 2021. Each becomes an event generating media coverage and social media engagement.
Singles work better for streaming economics. One strong track in major playlists generates more revenue than full albums casual listeners never complete. Production costs stay lower. Risk decreases. Artists experiment annually without committing to concepts that might fail.
Direct fan funding changed power dynamics. Patreon, Kickstarter, Bandcamp enable artists to maintain independence from labels while funding projects through supporter subscriptions. Jacob Collier used Patreon for his “#IHarmU” campaign, collecting fan-submitted melodies and creating harmonisations.
The model funds creative work while building community. Fans become stakeholders, not passive consumers.
For Christmas jazz, this matters enormously. The genre attracts passionate collectors willing to pay premium prices for special editions, exclusive content, personalised experiences.
Annual singles can be pre-funded through subscriptions. Vinyl pressings happen via campaigns guaranteeing sufficient demand before manufacturing.
Independence allows artistic risks labels wouldn’t support. Kevin Brown’s Medieval liturgical Christmas album wouldn’t get major label funding, but direct fan support made it possible.
Social Media Changed Everything
Discoverability no longer depends on radio airplay or label budgets. A viral TikTok generates millions of streams overnight. Artists who understand platform dynamics gain advantages traditional marketing can’t match.
Laufey built her audience through Instagram and TikTok before signing deals. Her content strategy involves showing creative process, outfit choices, daily life alongside musical performances.
That transparency builds relationships with fans who feel they know her personally. When she releases Christmas music, those fans promote it through their networks organically.
Platform mechanics matter enormously. TikTok’s algorithm favours short, hook-heavy content. Instagram rewards consistent posting and aesthetic coherence. YouTube values longer technical demonstrations.
These requirements disadvantage artists who resist self-promotion or lack visual charisma. Some jazz musicians excel instrumentally but struggle with social media’s performative demands.
The generational divide shows clearly. Artists under 35 navigate social media naturally. Those over 50 often find it baffling.
Mid-career musicians (35-50) occupy uncomfortable middle ground, remembering pre-social industry but recognising its current necessity.
For Christmas jazz, social media enables rapid trend adoption. When “Laufey-core” fashion became popular, fans shared outfit photos immediately.
When Bill Murray appeared in her video, clips spread across platforms within hours. Traditional media followed social buzz rather than driving it.
Where This Goes Next
Christmas jazz isn’t replacing Vince Guaraldi or Ella Fitzgerald. It’s expanding past them. The classics remain relevant.
But now Laufey reaches audiences those recordings never touched. Jacob Collier demonstrates harmonic possibilities earlier artists didn’t explore. Direct fan funding enables projects major labels wouldn’t support.
Technology drives all of it. Streaming, vinyl, social media, and crowdfunding create possibilities impossible two decades ago. Artists build global audiences from bedrooms.
Geographic location doesn’t determine opportunity anymore. Independence doesn’t automatically mean poverty (though it still requires entrepreneurial hustle).
The question isn’t whether modern Christmas jazz matches earlier quality. It’s whether current artists honour jazz tradition while addressing contemporary experience.
By that measure, the genre’s doing fine. Laufey’s sophisticated harmonies in modern production. Collier’s experimental reharmonisations introducing young audiences to advanced theory.
Lakecia Benjamin’s soul-jazz intensity applied to standards. This represents jazz alive, not preserved.
Christmas jazz changes because culture changes. Gen Z discovered it through algorithm-curated playlists, not vinyl browsing.
They consume it via phone speakers, not hi-fi systems. They share it through social media, not mixtapes. Those differences matter. Artists who acknowledge them succeed. Those who don’t become irrelevant.
The genre thrives because young artists engage it seriously. They’re not performing nostalgia. They’re creating music that draws from jazz tradition while belonging unmistakably to 2025. That’s what keeps traditions alive: not preservation but evolution.
