Alanis Morissette releases her first holiday album, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, on November 6 through Epiphany Music and Virgin Music. The Alanis Morissette holiday album runs 14 tracks, pairs seasonal standards with two new original songs, and opens with the single Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, featuring Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin, which is out now.
Morissette, born in Ottawa and one of Canada’s defining recording artists, has released seasonal songs before, but never a full-length holiday record. This one arrives four years after her most recent studio album, The Storm Before the Calm, and it is built as a proper album rather than a singles collection: standards, originals and a guest list that crosses folk, comedy and gospel.
Good Weather for Immaculate Conception tracklist
The full tracklist is confirmed. The album opens with O Holy Night, includes What Child Is This, Little Drummer Boy and Ave Maria, and closes its standards run with Last Christmas and Silent Night. The two originals are To an Empath at Christmas Time and Christmas on the Dancefloor, titles that fit Morissette’s long habit of writing the personal angle into a familiar form. She also takes on Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and River by Joni Mitchell, a Canadian songbook choice that gives the record a direct line to the country’s own winter standard.
The guests are specific rather than decorative. Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin join Beautiful Star of Bethlehem. Amythyst Kiah features on Momma Mary. Trans Voices feature on O Tannenbaum. Joy Oladokun joins Silent Night, and Martin Short, a fellow Canadian and Steve Martin’s longtime collaborator, closes the album on Merry Christmas. Few holiday records this year carry a guest list that moves from Carlile’s Americana to Short’s comedy timing without losing the thread, and the thread here is Morissette’s voice holding the centre.
Why a first holiday album lands now
A first holiday album three decades into a career is a statement about catalogue, not novelty. Morissette’s audience has aged with her, and a holiday record becomes part of how families hear an artist every December. Releasing it on November 6, ahead of the full holiday rush, with a single already streaming, follows the proven shape: one advance song in October, the full album in early November, and six weeks of seasonal listening to carry it.
The Canadian frame matters too. River is the clearest example. Joni Mitchell wrote the song that turned a Christmas setting into something reflective and blue, and Morissette covering it places this album inside a Canadian tradition rather than a generic seasonal market. Add Martin Short on the closing track and the record reads as a Canadian artist making the holiday album on her own terms, with her own people in the room.
What to listen for on November 6
The test of the record sits in the originals. To an Empath at Christmas Time and Christmas on the Dancefloor have to stand beside O Holy Night and Silent Night without sounding like filler between standards, and Morissette’s writing has always been strongest when it names a feeling plainly. If the originals hold, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception becomes a recurring December record rather than a one-season release.
The track selection also maps the two halves of Morissette’s public life. The sacred standards, O Holy Night, Ave Maria and Silent Night, sit beside the pop canon of Last Christmas and the reflective songwriting of River, and the album treats both with the same seriousness. Steve Martin’s presence on the lead single is musical as well as marquee: Martin is an accomplished banjo player, and Beautiful Star of Bethlehem is a gospel hymn that gives that picking a natural home beside Carlile’s voice. It is a collaboration that looks unusual on a tracklist and sounds inevitable on the record.
There is also a plain commercial logic to the timing, and it favours Canadian artists this year. A November 6 release gives the album the full holiday season on streaming playlists, and Morissette’s catalogue already performs heavily in Canada every December. A first holiday album from an artist of her stature does not need to chase the season. It joins a rotation her audience already keeps, and it gives that rotation a record with her name on all 14 tracks.
The album is available for pre-order now and arrives November 6 on Epiphany Music and Virgin Music. Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, with Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin, is streaming ahead of the release.
