With her newest collection ‘The Christmas Songs’, Hanne Leland steps into December with a winter record that remembers the quiet corners of the season as much as its sparkle. The Norwegian pop artist has long been admired for her emotional transparency, and here she channels that gift into a set of songs that feel like they were crafted beside a frosted window, with warm light spilling in from the next room.
Rather than drowning her voice in seasonal excess, she builds the album around what’s cherished, what’s missing, and what lingers long after the lights are packed away. The classics she revisits are handled with disarming stillness. Her rendition of ‘Blue Christmas’ pulls away the theatrics usually attached to the song and replaces them with something more intimate, almost confessional. By contrast, her take on ‘Winter Wonderland’ glows with genuine joy. It’s a delicate balance of nostalgia without cliché that she maintains throughout.
Where the album truly blooms, though, is in her original writing. ‘This Time of Year’ and ‘Snowflake’ sit at the emotional core of the collection as songs shaped by longing, presence, and the strange ache that surfaces when the world tells you you’re supposed to be merry. Leland has always been adept at tapping into the emotional undercurrents we prefer to ignore, and here she offers a portrait of December that admits its shadows.
Her voice guides the album with sincerity. There’s a candour to her delivery that cuts through glossy holiday expectations, grounding the record in something unmistakably human. That humanity, of course, extends beyond the music. Leland’s longstanding advocacy for autonomy, equality, and lived truth threads subtly through the album.
As a debut seasonal release, ‘The Christmas Songs’ feels both classic and deeply personal. It’s a winter album defined by warmth, clarity, and the comfort of hearing someone articulate what the season really feels like.
Hanne Leland is inviting us into the festivities with feeling. And in a world racing toward December on autopilot, that invitation is its own kind of magic.
