Alanis Morissette Announces Her First Holiday Album, Good Weather For Immaculate Conception

Alanis Morissette will release her first holiday album, Good Weather For Immaculate Conception, on 11/6 through Epiphany Music/Virgin Music. It runs fourteen tracks, and most are standards: “O Holy Night,” “What Child Is This?,” “River,” “Last Christmas,” “Silent Night.” Only two are newly written, “Christmas On The Dance Floor” and “To An Empath At Christmas Time.”

The lead single is her version of “Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem,” the gospel hymn most famously recorded by the Judds, with Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin. Carlile and Morissette recently shared a Red Rocks bill, which gives the pairing some recent history. The rest of the guest list frames the album as a gathering rather than a solo project: Martin Short on “Merry Christmas,” Amythyst Kiah on “Momma Mary,” Joy Oladokun on “Silent Night,” and the British trans choir Trans Voices on “O Tannenbaum.”

Morissette’s catalog has rarely been seasonal, and the album’s open question sits with its two originals, the only place to hear what a Christmas song written by her sounds like rather than interpreted by her.

Holiday records tend to be either a commercial reflex or an actual detour. A guest list that reaches from bluegrass to a trans choir suggests Morissette is treating this one as the latter. The new songs are where that gets settled.