Music

Everyday Xmas

Australian singer-songwriter Sia takes her first holiday album, Everyday Is Christmas, seriously. She and collaborator Greg Kurstin have written 10 songs, helping it stand out from the forest of collections dominated by over-familiar songs.

They bring energy to dance-minded tracks such as Santa's Coming for Us and the Phil Spector-inspired Candy Cane Lane, while investing sincerity into more introspective songs including Snowflake and Underneath the Mistletoe.

After midnight

With her new album, Christmas After Midnight, Fantasia Barrino serves up this year's intimate and romantic holiday collection.

Along with a bevy of seasonal standards, she includes some slightly left-field choices, including Leiber & Stoller's The Snow Is Falling and a Motown deep cut, Give Love on Christmas Day, previously recorded by the Jackson 5 and Johnny Gill. It's meticulously produced, at times overwhelming the human factor that allows music to soar.