Wrapped in Red is the sixth studio album by American singer Kelly Clarkson, released on October 25, 2013, by RCA Records. The album is a follow-up to her first greatest hits album, Greatest Hits – Chapter One, and its companion extended play, The Smoakstack Sessions Vol. 2. Produced by Greg Kurstin, it is her first Christmas album and her only record to be solely released by RCA. Wrapped in Red consists of sixteen tracks, featuring five original songs co-penned with Kurstin and eleven cover versions of Christmas standards and carols, two of which are duets featuring singers Ronnie Dunn, Reba McEntire and Trisha Yearwood.
Weary of constantly being asked for her primary genre, Clarkson had long desired to record a Christmas album as a means to defy genre limitations. She commissioned Kurstin, who had studied jazz music under the tutelage of Jaki Byard, to produce the entire album. Drawing inspirations from the soundtracks of A Charlie Brown Christmas and White Christmas, as well as the Christmas albums by Mariah Carey, McEntire, and Phil Spector, they experimented on various styles and sounds using Spector's famed Wall of Sound technique to create a contemporary holiday theme to classics. The Christmas music of Wrapped in Red comprises a variety of genres such as pop, jazz, country, and soul, marking a departure from the pop rock sound established from Clarkson's previous studio albums, while its lyrics share a singular theme of the color red, which represents a plethora of emotions during the holidays.
Wrapped in Red debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number 3 and topped the Billboard Top Holiday Albums chart with 70,000 copies sold in its first week of release. For nine consecutive weeks, Wrapped in Red stayed on the top ten of both charts and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and Music Canada. By the end of 2013, it became the year's best-selling Christmas release in the United States and the second best-selling Christmas release in Canada. Its lead single, "Underneath the Tree", became an international top forty Christmas hit song and was radio's most-played new holiday song of 2013. In promoting Wrapped in Red Clarkson appeared in red dresses on various televised appearances and filmed an accompanying television special, Kelly Clarkson's Cautionary Christmas Music Tale, at The Venetian Las Vegas, which premiered on NBC on December 11, 2013. In 2014, Clarkson released the title track as the second single and hosted the Christmas benefit concert, Miracle on Broadway, at the Bridgestone Arena from 2014 to 2016.
Background
Clarkson had expressed interest in recording a Christmas album for years, having recorded various Christmas songs such as "Oh Holy Night" and "My Grown Up Christmas List" on the American Idol: The Great Holiday Classics (2003), "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on iTunes Session (2011), and being featured on Blake Shelton's Christmas album Cheers, It's Christmas (2012). Weary of constantly being asked for her primary genre, she felt that recording a Christmas album would finally pave a way for her to explore other different genres. She remarked, "I always get asked what genre I'm in: 'Is this country or pop or rock? What are you?' And what's cool about making the Christmas album was, 'Oh, there are no limitations! We can do whatever we want!'". She further added, "The thing about Christmas is that it almost doesn't matter what mood you're in or what kind of a year you've had—it's a fresh start. I'm going to clear the air and take stock of the good that's happened."
Discussions about making her sixth studio album being a Christmas record began on December 2012, a month after releasing her first greatest hits album, Greatest Hits – Chapter One. Having found the opportunity to do so, Clarkson commissioned producer and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin, whom she had previously collaborated with on her albums Stronger and Greatest Hits – Chapter One, to solely produce the whole album. Despite having been raised in the Jewish faith and unfamiliar with Christmas songs, Kurstin agreed to produce the project. As a result, the record marked the second time her studio album only had a single producer (the first being David Kahne solely producing My December in 2007). It also marked the fourth time Kurstin had solely produced an entire studio album apart from being a member of the musical groups The Bird and the Bee and Geggy Tah (the first three being Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You in 2009, Sia's We Are Born in 2010, and The Shins' Port of Morrow in 2012).