Natalie Grant has spent the past decade dreaming of making another Christmas record. Her first holiday offering, “Believe,” released in 2005, and she’s been imagining a follow-up ever since. Now, 10 years later, her dream has become reality with the aptly titled “Christmas.”
When asked for the one word that best describes the cozy 10-track collection, without hesitation, Grant calls it “classic.”
Heading into the studio, she had a few classic holiday recordings in mind that set the bar high. “Harry Connick, Jr. — it starts, and you know exactly what it is. Michael Bublé — from the downbeat, you didn’t hear his voice, but you knew it was his record,” she reflects from the K-LOVE Studios green room in between takes as she films exclusive performances of songs from the new album. “I tasked my husband with, ‘Create something that, when you hit play, you’re like, ‘That’s Natalie’s Christmas record.’”
Her husband, GRAMMY® Award-winning songwriter/producer Bernie Herms, aced the assignment, composing a beautiful orchestral intro for warm opening selection “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”
While the nostalgic endeavor is characterized by holiday standards — like a bright, retro-tinged version of “Jingle Bells,” a Gospel-infused rendering of “Go Tell It On The Mountain” and a stunning cover of Whitney Houston’s “Who Would Imagine A King” from the 1996 theatrical remake of “The Preacher’s Wife” — Grant also introduces a few originals: the spunky “Christmas Looks Good On You” and the sacred “God’s Gift To Us.”
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Meanwhile, Herms produced with help from vocal arranger Tim Davis, whose impressive credits include “Glee.” Furthermore, portions of the LP were captured with The Nashville Strings at the historic RCA Studios, hallowed ground where icons like Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton have recorded. Grant tracked her vocals live alongside the orchestra and a group of background singers, giving “Christmas” an authentic, analog feel. “It’s real. The music is real. Everything feels like it’s from this other era,” she says of the project. “And the singers… They all sat around one microphone and sang. It was special.”
Only one selection features a guest vocalist. MercyMe’s Bart Millard makes a cameo on an a cappella rendition of “Silent Night.” “Bart never oversings anything. I love his voice. He just kind of infuses peace when he sings,” Grant remarks of her fall tourmate. “I was really grateful he said ‘yes.’”
Grant, on the other hand, had to intentionally attempt to not oversing. “One of my favorite tracks is the simplest one. It’s ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.’ It’s just piano and vocal,” she says of the album’s closing song. “It’s the lowest I’ve ever recorded on a record. The whole thing is low and warm. To sing it live, I have to give myself a pep talk: ‘Calm down, breathe, relax.’ I have to remind myself I’m not trying to strangle anybody with Christmas. I’m just trying to set the table for Christmas. And that was important to me on that track.”
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Although the GMA Dove Award winner is known for her powerhouse pipes, her vocals across “Christmas” are purposefully restrained at times, in an effort to create the kind of holiday soundtrack that instantly feels like home.
The release also opens a fresh chapter for Grant. “Christmas” is her first record with a new label team, following 23 years at her previous label home and 2023’s “Seasons,” which saw the songstress collaborating with a slew of A-listers, including Dolly Parton. This year also marks her tenth annual holiday tour with longtime friend Danny Gokey. The 12-city outing kicked off with a performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Once the tour wraps, Grant is looking forward to having her family home for the holidays — an especially bittersweet sentiment since she and her husband sent their oldest daughters, twins Bella and Gracie, off to college this fall. With Bella enrolled at Florida’s Southeastern University and Gracie living on campus at Belmont University in Nashville, Grant says the holidays have already felt different this year.
“I don’t think anything prepares a mom and dad for when their kids leave. It’s been an interesting adjustment season, but I think that’s what makes the excitement for Christmas greater. It’s going to be so exciting to have them home. They’ve always been home to help me decorate, and this year, they’re coming home to it decorated,” she reveals. “It’s just going to be a new normal. Admittedly, I liked our old world, where we were together all the time. I don’t know that I like this new normal, but we’re going to grow in it together.”
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Once the girls are home for their holiday break, joining younger sister Sadie, the Grant-Herms clan will pack up and make their way to Seattle, where they’ll spend Christmas with the singer’s extended family and eventually head over the border to visit Herms’ family in Canada.
The youngest of five, Grant’s entire family is musically gifted; and at Christmastime, they put their collective talent on display. “My brother is an incredible piano player and singer. Even though he’s a doctor, he’s one of my musical heroes. He’ll sit down at the piano, and we all gather around and sing on Christmas Eve as a family. My husband and my brother kind of trade off playing,” Grant shares. “Now there’s 40 of us that gather around the piano, and we still do it every Christmas… I wish I could transport you there, because it’s beautiful.”
In truth, the sweet tradition helped inform the track listing for “Christmas.” Many of the Christmas classics Grant cut for the album are ones she and her siblings have sung around the family piano since she was little.
The “King Of The World” singer was the only member of her family who chose to pursue music professionally. She dropped out of college to join vocal group Truth — which birthed many a Christian artist in the ’90s — before releasing her self-titled debut in 1999. Since then, the elementary education major has gone on to create a discography reflective of her evolution as both an artist and a woman as she’s morphed from a pretty pop singer into a passionate social justice advocate, a thoughtful songwriter and a world-class vocalist.
“For a female in the industry, it actually is hard to go the distance,” she reflects. “I’ve got young girls, young female artists, coming to me all the time going, ‘How did you do this?’”
Grant’s word of advice is always the same: “You have to lean into the season God has called you to.”
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Across more than two-and-a-half decades, that’s played out in a myriad of ways in Grant’s life and changed in even bigger ways when she had her daughters — true miracles after a long struggle with infertility.
“It’s a continual process. It’s not a one-and-done thing. I’m constantly going back to, ‘Why am I doing this? Am I still called to this? What is God asking of me in this season?’” she adds. “And sometimes it’s being willing to say, ‘You know what? I got this offer for this tour, but it doesn’t look good for my family, so I can’t say ‘yes’ to that.’ But it also doesn’t mean you have to completely say ‘no’ to everything else. It just means you have to find a rhythm that works for you.”
For Grant, that meant coming off the road for her twins’ senior year to ensure she didn’t miss any big milestones. For 2026, it looks like limiting her touring in favor of more time at home, which will afford her the flexibility to visit her older daughters with some regularity, as well as work on her next album.
While it’s still in the early stages of development, Grant’s upcoming effort will likely take a more worshipful tone.
“The last few years, it’s been such a joy to return to what really made me fall in love with music, and that’s the local church,” Grant says of serving and leading worship at her home church in Nashville, The Belonging Co. “I grew up serving in the local church. I learned how to do a setlist with the local church. I learned how to arrange music at the local church. I learned how to worship in the local church. So, to be involved in our church in Nashville and to be a part of the worship community there has been such a gift. I think it’s tapped back into my love of leading worship.
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“I’m not going to say I’m making a worship record,” she teases, “but I am thinking and dreaming and praying about how that part of me is infused into the artist part of me and how to roll that all into one.”
Twenty-six years in, and Grant is still dreaming. Perhaps that’s the bigger secret to her longevity. “I can honestly say with sincerity that I have never lost the wonder that I get to do this; and I think it’s because I never dreamed I would get to do this. I remember being a kid growing up in Seattle and going to the local Christian bookstore to listen to songs on the big boombox with headphones and finding my high-low track for what I wanted to sing at church,” she says. “And I think that’s kind of the spark, keeping the childlike wonder of, ‘Remember when this mic used to be your hairbrush, and these people used to be your stuffed animals?’ Knowing that, I want to always steward and sustain it well. It’s a real gift that God’s allowed me to do this for this long.”
