Starbucks released Holiday Blend on Wednesday (Nov 4), a seven-song set issued through Interscope Records and Universal Music Group that the coffee chain calls its first global holiday album in more than a decade. Coco Jones sings the second track, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," the standard Andy Williams introduced in 1963. The Womack Sisters take Stevie Wonder's "What Christmas Means to Me" at track six. Leon Thomas closes the album with "Soulful Christmas," the title James Brown put on his 1968 holiday record for King.

Wonder released "What Christmas Means to Me" on Someday at Christmas in 1967, a Motown record co-written by Anna Gordy Gaye, the sister of the label's founder. Brown answered the next season with A Soulful Christmas, an album that also carried "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto." Starbucks sequenced them back to back at the end of its album. The last stretch of the in-store rotation this season belongs to Sam Cooke's granddaughters and a three-time Grammy winner, working through two of soul's defining holiday records.

The rest of the lineup pulls in other directions. Magnus Ferrell opens with a medley of "Happy Holiday" and "The Holiday Season," Brandi Carlile sings Joni Mitchell's "River," and the Latin group TRÍADA delivers "Llegó La Navidad" in Spanish. JYT supplies the only original on the album, a new song that happens to carry the same title as Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas." That makes it the second "This Christmas" of the week, since UMI covered the Hathaway version on Epic's 14-track compilation, which reunited Keri Hilson with her old Clutch partner Ezekiel Lewis five days earlier.

Coco Jones has been building toward a slot like this for years. Def Jam put her "Silver Bells" on its Def the Halls compilation in 2022. The following year, Apple Music had her sing all three parts of Destiny's Child's "8 Days of Christmas" for its Carols Covered series. In November 2024 she released Coco by the Fireplace, a four-song EP made entirely of originals, and performed from it on NBC's Christmas in Rockefeller Center that December. Last year brought "Skip My House," another original, which makes Holiday Blend her fifth straight season with new holiday material on the market.

The difference this time is the song. Her own holiday catalog leaned on writing, from the self-gifting "Santa Is Me" on the EP to a single telling Santa to skip her address entirely. Starbucks handed the Grammy winner, who took Best R&B Performance for "ICU" in 2024, the most familiar opening line in the American holiday songbook. Jones described the assignment in the company's announcement as something she took personally.

"It's so special to be part of Starbucks Holiday Blend album. I was honored and excited to put my own spin on such a beloved holiday classic, and I hope my version brings a little extra joy to people's celebrations this season."

Coco Jones

It is her first holiday release since her August 1 wedding to NBA guard Donovan Mitchell, a marriage sister site Athletic Dating broke down as a case study in dating around a touring calendar. The Nashville-raised singer spent much of 2025 on the road behind Why Not More?, her debut album.

The Womack Sisters arrive at a Starbucks counter by a much longer road. Kucha, Zeimani and BG Womack are the daughters of Cecil and Linda Womack, who recorded "Teardrops" as Womack & Womack, and the nieces of Bobby Womack. Linda is Sam Cooke's eldest child. The sisters grew up singing behind their parents on tour, self-released a single in 2016 and put out the Legacy EP in 2022. Their self-titled Daptone debut finally landed on August 14, the same night they opened for Al Green at the Hollywood Bowl.

That album opens with "Chauffeur," a song the trio wrote out of the years they spent driving rideshare in Los Angeles. Three months after that Hollywood Bowl night, a Universal-distributed compilation put them in rotation at one of the largest restaurant chains on earth. Their statement in the Starbucks announcement went straight to the family that raised them on a tour bus.

"For our family, Christmas is the best time of the year. The holidays are about togetherness, so singing 'What Christmas Means to Me' felt like a natural way to celebrate the season and share a piece of that family connection."

The Womack Sisters

Leon Thomas is the one name among the three without a quote in the announcement, and Brandi Carlile is the only other artist left out of the quotes. His year has done the talking. At the 68th Grammy Awards on February 1, MUTT won Best R&B Album and "Vibes Don't Lie" won Best Traditional R&B Performance. Those joined the Best R&B Song trophy he collected two years earlier for co-writing SZA's "Snooze." He entered that ceremony with six nominations, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist, then took Best Male R&B/Pop Artist at the BET Awards in June.

Closing a holiday compilation with James Brown is a specific assignment, and it fits the way Thomas has worked all year. He has spent 2026 moving between his own records and features on other people's, including Davido's "Tell Everybody." HitsCulture traced that range in its look at how he and Mariah the Scientist reshaped modern R&B. The former Nickelodeon actor who wrote for Ariana Grande and Drake before anyone knew his voice now gets the last word on a record built to play in public all season.

Thomas and Jones have shared a microphone before. For Valentine's Day 2024, Spotify paired them on a cover of Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé's "Until the End of Time." Both started as child actors, Thomas on Nickelodeon and Jones on Disney, before moving into R&B on their own terms. Thomas framed that session in a statement at the time as a generational one. "She along with myself are really part of the next wave of R&B singers who are doing it for the love of the genre!" he said. Two and a half years later, both of them sit on the same holiday tracklist, five songs apart.

Starbucks has history in this lane. Its Hear Music imprint co-released Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company with Concord in 2004, the duets album that won Album of the Year at the Grammys the following February. The company spent years after that selling CD compilations at the register. Holiday Blend comes back through a major label and streaming services, with the in-store playlist doing the work the checkout rack used to do.

Erin Silvoy, the company's senior vice president of global marketing and channel development, pitched the album as continuity. "Music has always been part of the Starbucks experience, and we are building on that legacy in a way that feels fresh for today," she said. Starbucks attached a $500,000 donation to World Central Kitchen to the release, extending a partnership The Starbucks Foundation has held with the relief organization since 2019.

The album went up on streaming platforms Wednesday, and the company's holiday season, with Peppermint Mocha and Gingerbread Chai back on the menu, began Thursday (Nov 5). In select coffeehouses around the world, the seven tracks will run on rotation through the end of December, and every pass through the playlist ends on Leon Thomas singing James Brown.