“Silent Night” is not that silent after all.
The 19th-century Austrian Christmas carol has been covered so many times by so many artists that if you take the 2 minutes and 40 seconds of Bing Crosby’s 1942 version as a sort of average duration, you could play “Silent Night” nonstop for a week without repeating a version.
There are more than 3,700 interpretations of “Silent Night,” making it the all-time most covered song, according to the online database SecondHandSongs.com. A distant second is the aria “Summertime” (more than 2,300 covers), and another holiday banger, “White Christmas,” comes in third with more than 2,100 covers.
Opera singers, choirs, crooners, pop divas, jazz ensembles, and even surf and punk bands have reinterpreted “Silent Night.” They’ve sung it in hundreds of languages, including Gaelic, Arabic, Swahili and Japanese.
Sarah Eyerly, an associate professor of musicology at Florida State University, says that the lyrics, originally written in 1816, are key to the appeal of the composition.
“I think there’s something deeply meaningful in the text of the song that really speaks about those types of circumstances that resonate with people in a way that it transcends Christian messages, it transcends the celebration of Christmas,” Eyerly said. “It’s really a kind of a sense of universal hope and peace.”
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George Plasketes, a professor of media studies and popular culture at Auburn University, called the song “almost like comfort food.” Much like “Amazing Grace,” he said, “Silent Night” is one of those songs that become imprinted on every generation, not only because of the lyrics but also the melody.
Musical icons from every era have covered it: Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, the Temptations and Simon & Garfunkel in the 1960s, Boyz II Men and holiday queen Mariah Carey in the 1990s, and most recently, Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton.
Three of the covers have made the Billboard Top 100: Bing Crosby’s version peaked in 1960, Mahalia Jackson’s in 1962 and Carrie Underwood’s in 2021.
A song that sounds like waves
Almost a third of the “Silent Night” covers in the SecondHandSongs.com database are instrumental.
The recognizable melody and structure of “Silent Night” is “meant to mimic the songs of Italian fishermen,” Eyerly said.
That style of music, known as siciliana, is easy to memorize and sing along with, according to Eyerly. “And when you sing it or play it, it gives the sense of water of actually rolling waves and the rhythmic sounds of water.”
Share this articleShareEyerly says that the rhythm pattern of the song makes it difficult to stray from it without making the song unrecognizable.
“That pattern is just so strong that it really overwrites other musical interpretations,” says Eyerly.
Still, musicians have approached “Silent Night” from many different genres. “That always gets fun when somebody does it [a holiday song] country or rock or Motown or soul,” Plasketes said.
He explains that those covers in a different voice or instrumentation, or in a different place or time, “may help keep them fresh and appealing,” or, in other cases, “less appealing depending on the rendition.”
Plasketes mentions Bob Dylan’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” as an example. His nasal voice “is far from the original and other versions. Yet that becomes part of the appeal.”
Of course, artists aren’t doing this only for the art. Holiday music sells.
And so far, in 2023, there are 32 new “Silent Night” covers out there — again, using Crosby’s 1942 version, nearly 85 minutes worth or so — to enjoy this holiday season.
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About this story
Data as of Dec. 1, 2023. SecondHandSongs.com is a collaborative project that crowdsources covers relying on voluntary contributors and editors. Songs labeled as unverified in the database weren’t included in the graphic. Johnny Cash versions can be on his own or with his family and friends.
For this story, the reporter listened to more than 200 “Silent Night” covers, but only a few of them left a mark.
This story was edited by Chiqui Esteban.
Bonnie Berkowitz contributed to this report.
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