{"id":7648,"date":"2025-12-25T15:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ariana-grande-christmas-chill-greatest-pop-stars-podcast-1236145521\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T15:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:20:07","slug":"ariana-grande-christmas-chill-greatest-pop-stars-podcast-1236145521","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ariana-grande-christmas-chill-greatest-pop-stars-podcast-1236145521\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Ariana Grande\u2019s \u2018Christmas & Chill\u2019 EP Secretly One of Her Most Important\u00a0Releases?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIn late 2015, Ariana Grande<\/a>\u2018s seemingly frictionless ascendance to all-consuming pop superstardom had finally hit a tiny bit of turbulence. \u201cDonutgate\u201d and other small-scale controversies<\/a> had put her in the media\u2019s crossfire for the first time, while \u201cFocus\u201d \u2014 the planned lead single off her upcoming third album, then to be titled Moonlight<\/em> \u2014 had disappointed commercially and left fans a little cold. It was nothing she couldn\u2019t and wouldn\u2019t bounce back from, but in the meantime, she dropped a surprise release to celebrate the holiday season, and give both her sound and her career a little bit of a reset: the six-song EP Christmas & Chill<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn this week\u2019s Great Moments in Pop Star History episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast<\/strong><\/a>, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard<\/em> staff writer and longtime Arianator Kyle Denis to look back at 10 years of Christmas & Chill<\/em>. We remember the Ariana Grande holiday releases that preceded it \u2014 including a song that\u2019s already well on its way to being an all-time seasonal standard \u2014 and then dive into why Chill<\/em> has come to hold a particularly special place in the hearts of fans and of Grande herself, as well as how it ended up predicting a lot of the places she would go in her later secular releases. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile doing so, we address all the most pressing questions around Grande\u2019s Christmas & Chill<\/em> \u2014\u00a0how did an EP with no self-consciously big songs on it end up playing such a big part in her career? What are our favorite songs on the EP? How did she get away with a ukulele song in 2015? Do we care about the difference between the \u201cNaughty\u201d and nice versions of \u201cSanta Tell Me\u201d? Why has Grande never made much of an effort to actively revisit or repromote any of her holiday releases? And perhaps most importantly: Is there a world in which Grande eventually ends up being Mariah Carey\u2019s successor as the Queen of Christmas? <\/p>\n