According to a 2023 poll by Yahoo, 54% of people think holiday music has been starting “too early” over the past few years.
If you’re in the 46% percent of people who are perfectly okay with holiday music starting somewhere around the end of Halloween, this article is not for you. For you, might we suggest something like Rock’s Biggest Christmas Songs: The Stories Behind 15 Classics?
But there is no law saying that just because it’s winter one must listen to holiday music — there are other options available. This December, think kindly, if you would, of those folks who aren’t in love with songs about Christmas and Santa and the like but still want to get into the seasonal spirit. Here are 30 Wintertime Songs That Aren’t Holiday-Related.
1. “Cold as Ice,” Foreigner
From: Foreigner (1977)
Yes, Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” is meant to be a metaphor for a stony-hearted lover, but there was also a literal aspect to it. “It wasn’t aimed at anyone specific,” Mick Jones explained to Classic Rock in 2021. “Well, there was one girl at school that dumped me, so maybe that trauma stayed with me over the years and subconsciously filtered in! The other contributing factor was that it was about minus 20 degrees in New York at the time we were writing it, which may have fed into the atmosphere.”
2. “Snowballed,” AC/DC
From: For Those About to Rock We Salute You (1981)
There’s a few different ways you could interpret AC/DC’s “Snowballed.” It’s not out of the realm of possibilities that it refers to cocaine — “Snowballed out of my mind.” But perhaps it’s more like the old saying, the one used to describe circumstances that accelerate or accumulate quickly — “The howl of the wolf, snow in his eye / Waiting to take you by surprise.”
3. “Snowblind,” Black Sabbath
From: Vol. 4 (1972)
Okay, this one is actually a very clear reference to cocaine — “Fill my dreams with flakes of snow / Soon I’ll feel the chilling glow.” Black Sabbath has admitted so themselves. In fact, at one point they wanted to call Vol. 4, the album it appeared on, Snowblind, but, according to Tony Iommi‘s autobiography Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell With Black Sabbath, the higher-ups at Vertigo Records wouldn’t allow it.
4. “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” Simon & Garfunkel
From: Bookends (1968)
There’s something mournful about the period of time in which fall fades into the beginning of winter. “Hang on to your hopes, my friend,” Simon & Garfunkel sing in “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” which went to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. “That’s an easy thing to say.” When you’re done listening to this version, check out the Bangles’ 1987 cover of it, an even bigger chart hit.
5. “Wintertime Love,” The Doors
From: Waiting for the Sun (1968)
You’ve heard of a summer love. How about a wintertime one? It’s essentially the same thing, but with the seasons flopped and instead you have a lover to keep you warm during the cold months. “The piano and guitar interplay is absolutely beautiful,” Ray Manzarek said in the liner notes to 1997’s The Doors: Box Set. “I don’t think Robby [Krieger] and I ever played so sensitively together. It was the closest we ever came to being Bill Evans and Jim Hall.”
6. “Snow Blind,” Ace Frehley
From: Ace Frehley (1978)
If you ever listened to Ace Frehley’s “Snow Blind” when you were a kid — or essentially any age before you were exposed to the seeder underbelly of life — you may have thought he was just singing about being lost in a blizzard. As you got older, you likely came to terms with the fact that that was probably not the kind of white stuff Frehley was referring to when he sang “I’m snow blind, think I’m lost in space“
7. “Trapped Under Ice,” Metallica
From: Ride the Lightning (1984)
There’s two ways you could look at Metallica’s “Trapped Under Ice.” On the one hand, the lyrics could be considered metaphorically as being about someone who feels confined in some way emotionally — “Frozen soul, frozen down to the core / Break the ice, I can’t take anymore.” Or if you’d like to get a little more morbid with it, maybe the narrator is quite literally cryogenically frozen in time — “Crystallized as I lay here and rest / Eyes of glass stare directly at death.”
8. “Winter,” The Rolling Stones
From: Goats Head Soup (1973)
You would not guess it based on the lyrics and subject matter, but the Rolling Stones penned “Winter” while in balmy Jamaica. This is a rare track in the sense that Keith Richards does not play on it at all — the rhythm guitar is Mick Jagger‘s doing, while the lead and slide guitar was done by Mick Taylor. The delicate piano part is courtesy of Nicky Hopkins, and the strings are the work of Nicky Harrison, who also arranged the strings in the song “Angie.”
9. “A Winter’s Tale,” Queen
From: Made in Heaven (1995)
Freddie Mercury did not live to see the release of “A Winter’s Tale,” which appeared on 1995’s Made in Heaven. According to Brian May, Mercury wrote the song at a lake house in Montreux, Switzerland, a place that is certainly no stranger to snow. May recorded his guitar solo after Mercury’s 1991 passing. “It was one of those things where I could hear it in my head, long before I actually got to play it,” May later said to Mojo (via uDiscover Music). “And when I recorded it, at my home studio, in my head I was there with Freddie in Montreux in those moments, even though this was happening long after he was gone.”
10. “Winterlude,” Bob Dylan
From: New Morning (1970)
“Winterlude” isn’t exactly Bob Dylan’s most his most intellectually stimulating song, and actually, “Winterlude” is meant to be a girl’s name in the lyrics — “You’re the one I adore, come over here and give me more / Then Winterlude, this dude thinks you’re fine.” But fun fact: years after this song was released on 1970’s New Morning, an annual wintertime festival called Winterlude began in Canada’s National Capital Region.
11. “Cold,” Annie Lennox
From: Diva (1992)
Just watching Annie Lennox’s music video for “Cold” makes one feel a little chilly. Her skin is so pale it’s nearly white and her lips appear a frosty blue-gray. “Cold is the color of crystal,” she sings. “the snowlight that falls from the heavenly skies.”
12. “Snowbound,” Genesis
From: …And Then There Were Three… (1978)
To be honest, Genesis has a few songs that probably could fit in on this list. “Snowbound” is one of them. “We tried to make this song a bit different,” Mike Rutherford explained to BBC Radio One in 1978, “a verse/chorus romantic acoustic song and the drums were slowed down, if you listen, they have a funny sound. It was an easy one to record, a romantic song about a guy who gets inside a snowman outfit to hide from everybody, he was paranoid, and he gets stuck!”
13. “Winterlong,” Neil Young
From: Decade (1977)
Neil Young did an excellent job of distilling down the distinct sense of yearning that seems to come along with the season in “Winterlong,” which happens to be a favorite of Black Francis from Pixies. “There’s not really a chorus in the song, but it sounds like a really chorus-y song,” Francis once told Songfacts. “It has very classic/traditional kind of chord shapes in it, like ’50s rock, but it has a much more nuanced arrangement than you would think, kind of like a Roy Orbison song or something like that.”
14. “Writes of Winter,” Jimmy Page
From: Outrider (1988)
There’s nothing really about Jimmy Page’s “Writes of Winter” that screams winter aside from the title, given that it’s an instrumental song. But who cares? It’s a fun listen anyway. “I’m not trying to be flippant here, but I just play the guitar, don’t I?” Page said to Guitar World in 1988, the year his one and only solo album, Outrider, was released, which included “Writes of Winter.” “That is my characteristic and it’s my identity as you hear it. I suppose as far as this album goes, in a way it’s almost like a back-to-basics album. And with the guitar, as you’ve heard, I’ve limited the guitar effects as such, and in fact the ‘effects’ are the layering — the textures of the things. That was the basic idea of it.”
15. “December,” Weezer
From: Maladroit (2002)
“December” is the closing song on Weezer’s 2002 album Maladroit. The intertwining guitars? Pure artistic coincidence. “That was a total miracle,” Rivers Cuomo told Guitar World back then. “I had my solo mapped out, and Brian [Bell, Weezer co-guitarist] had his counterpoint line, but we had never heard each other’s parts. We just mashed them together to see what would happen, and it sounded beautiful.”
16. “February Stars,” Foo Fighters
From: The Colour and the Shape (1997)
Below is the 1997 version of “February Stars,” as recorded by Foo Fighters. But the song dates back several more years to Dave Grohl‘s Nirvana days. Somewhere out there is an early version with only Grohl and Krist Novoselic, who made a demo of it during Nirvana’s last recording session.
17. “Cold Rain and Snow,” The Grateful Dead
From: The Grateful Dead (1967)
Before the Grateful Dead officially began, Jerry Garcia could often be found playing folk music — he played acoustic guitar and banjo in bluegrass groups like the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers. So it makes sense that some traditional folk songs carried over into the Grateful Dead’s catalog. “Cold Rain and Snow” was one of them, which dates back to 1917.
18. “40 Below,” David Lee Roth
From: A Little Ain’t Enough (1991)
Leave it to David Lee Roth to turn a song about cold temperatures into some kind of sexual metaphor. “Call me 40 below and I’ll be whippin’ in your window,” he sings. “I’ll be lickin’ round your knees / I can drop below zero any moment, baby / I’m talkin’ 40 degrees.”
19. “Out in the Cold,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
From: Into the Great Wide Open (1991)
“It’s not a bad album,” Tom Petty once said of 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open. “I don’t think it was the best way to work with the Heartbreakers.” Petty was almost certainly referring to the fact that Jeff Lynne co-produced the album, lending a style that not everyone in the band loved. Still, there’s some great rock ‘n’ roll songwriting on it — “Out in the Cold” is one example.
20. “California Dreamin,'” The Mamas and the Papas
From: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966)
If you live in California or someplace else with a similar climate, this entry is not for you. This is for the people who live where sheets of snow fall every winter, which can sometimes lose its magic after shoveling it out for weeks on end. Those people deserve a little sunshine and a warm breeze. The Mamas and the Papas sang about this exact feeling in “California Dreamin.'”
21. “2000 Miles,” The Pretenders
From: Learning to Crawl (1984)
Chrissie Hynde penned “2000 Miles” following the passing of Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, who died of a drug overdose at 25 years old. “The snow is falling down / Gets colder day by day / I miss you,” she sings. The accompanying music video shows Hynde out in the elements, plus a…person in a polar bear costume.
22. “Winter Time,” Steve Miller Band
From: Book of Dreams (1977)
“Winter Time” by Steve Miller Band features Bob Glaub on bass, whose resume of rock collaborations ranges from John Lennon to Journey, Bob Dylan to the Bee Gees and so many more. A special shout out should be given to Norton Buffalo who provides the haunting harmonica solo at the beginning of the song while the wind fades.
23. “Bare Trees,” Fleetwood Mac
From: Bare Trees (1972)
Bare Trees, Fleetwood Mac’s sixth studio album, was the last to include Danny Kirwan, meaning “Bare Trees” the song was one of the last Kirwan-penned numbers the band recorded. (Kirwan also sang the lead vocal on it.) “Danny was a quantum leap ahead of us creatively,” Mick Fleetwood later told Music Aficionado. “He was a hugely important part of the band.”
24. “Mandolin Wind,” Rod Stewart
From: Every Picture Tells a Story (1971)
Why does Rod Stewart always seem to be singing about a lost lover? “Through the coldest winter in almost 14 years, I couldn’t believe you kept a smile,” he sings in “Mandolin Wind,” which features — you guessed it — a mandolin part by Ray Jackson. A year after Stewart’s version came out, the Everly Brothers recorded the song for their 1972 album Stories We Could Tell.
25. “A Winter’s Tale,” The Moody Blues
From: December (2003)
Queen is not the only band with a song called “A Winter’s Tale.” But actually, the Moody Blues recording below is a cover of a 1982 song originally recorded by the English singer-songwriter David Essex, who took it to No. 2 on the U.K. singles chart. The Moody Blues’ version appeared on their 2003 album — and their last ever – December.
26. “The White Snows of Winter,” REO Speedwagon
From: Not So Silent Night … Christmas with REO Speedwagon (2009)
Oddly enough, like the Moody Blues above, REO Speedwagon’s last album was also a holiday one. Most of the tracks on 2009’s Not So Silent Night…Christmas With REO Speedwagon are, well, Christmas-related. But “The White Snows of Winter” is an exception.
27. “Latitude 88 North,” Electric Light Orchestra
From: Out of the Blue (2007 Reissue)
ELO’s “Latitude 88 North” surfaced on the 2007 reissue Out of the Blue. For you geography fans out there, the title is a reference to what’s known as 88th parallel north, the particular circle of latitude located in the Arctic Ocean. Pretty damn cold up there.
28. “Sometimes in Winter,” Blood, Sweat & Tears
From: Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968)
The person primarily responsible for lead vocals in Blood, Sweat & Tears was David Clayton-Thomas, who joined the band in time for their second album. “David had that commercial voice,” his bandmate Steve Katz once said. “We felt it was going to work.” But there was one track on that 1968 self-titled release that featured Katz as the lead vocalist instead: “Sometimes in Winter.”
29. “End of the Season,” The Kinks
From: Something Else by the Kinks (1967)
In “End of the Season,” Ray Davies uses the changing of the weather as a metaphor for the departure of his lover: “Summer birds aren’t singing since you went away / Since you’ve been gone, end of the season, winter is here, close of play.” (It’s made particularly literal though with some real bird sounds at the beginning of the track.)
30. “Urge for Going,” Joni Mitchell
From: 1972 B-side
Like the Kinks above, Joni Mitchell uses the shift of the seasons to drive home the feeling of drifting apart from a partner in “Urge for Going.” The song was first recorded by Tom Rush in 1968 — Mitchell’s own version finally arrived in 1972 as the one and only non-album B-side of her entire career.
Great Classic Rock Christmas Memories
As you’ll see, rock stars celebrate Christmas in their own rock star ways.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
