As they chase a wildly lucrative market with their new
Christmas albums, Gary Barlow, Jamie Cullum, Leona Lewis and more explain the financial – and emotional – pull of a seasonal hit
![Rockin’ around the Christmas streams: why festive music is bigger than ever](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e6817e61fd5a6d9173437da92c278a9abc5cda7f/7_0_8008_4808/master/8008.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=3ab2c1dd73b15e57cb7b522e86c7525a)
In July 1968, the visionary US guitarist John Fahey – whose albums, with names such as Death Chants, Breakdowns &
MILITARY Waltzes, hadn’t exactly been money-spinners – was out the back of a record store. “I saw all these cartons of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas,” he later recalled. “The clerk said it always sells out. So I got the idea to do a Christmas album.”
The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album has not achieved the ubiquity of Merry Xmas Everybody or Last Christmas, but it served its role. Purists might sneer – Mojo magazine once dismissed the album as “Cliff-territory bland” – but The New Possibility has never been out of print, selling more than 100,000 copies. Fahey ended up making five Christmas albums, and they served as a financial bulwark in a career that had its share of vicissitudes.