Crate Digging is our recurring feature series that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, SNL alum and The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon gives us six albums perfect for the Christmas and holiday season.
Per Mariah, November 1st is the first day when it’s permissible to start listening to Christmas music. And so to kick things off, The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon has some picks for the best holiday music albums ever — a genre he has some hands-on experience with, after putting together his own album of original songs for the season, Holiday Seasoning.
For Fallon, a great album for the holiday season is “something you can just put on and walk away, and it entertains the whole family. You don’t have to, like, skip a track or go to another thing — it’s setting the tone for decorating or sitting around having cocktails and cookies and hot cocoa with the family on Christmas Eve. It becomes part of your traditions.” Growing up, he says, his family was passionate about music, and during the holidays he and his sister would play DJ with his parents’ vinyl collection, their albums getting so much play that the cardboard sleeves would be close to falling apart.
Fallon began work on his own album three years ago, after Michele Anthony of Universal Music Group suggested he explore the idea. “I recorded one — I forget which one I did, but it sounded okay,” he says. “It wasn’t great. It was kind of corny. I was like, I don’t know if I’m as good as [Michael] Bublé or Kelly Clarkson or Mariah Carey — they’re good at this. That’s their lane. I think I should do something else.”
So instead, he focused on creating a family-friendly comedy album, with a mix of genres and guest artists including the Jonas Brothers, LL Cool J, Meghan Trainor, Will Ferrell, Dolly Parton, and of course The Roots. Holiday Seasoning even includes a New Year’s Eve song, specifically a polka co-written by “Weird Al” Yankovic. Why polka? “I thought, what genre makes you just happy? And that’s polka,” Fallon laughs. “It’s going to change New Year’s Eve from now on.”
As for his own favorite holiday albums, Fallon came in with a few pages of handwritten notes, having found the challenge of choosing just a few to be “near impossible. But I think I have some good answers.” Check out his picks below.