"You Make It Feel Like Christmas" is a song by American singer Gwen Stefani from her fourth studio album of the same name (2017). It features guest vocals from her then-boyfriend, Blake Shelton. The song was written by Stefani, Justin Tranter, Shelton and busbee, while production was handled by busbee and Eric Valentine. It was recorded during the summer months, with the song title leaking in August 2017. The song was eventually released for digital download and streaming as the lead single from the album by Interscope on September 22, 2017. It was influenced by popular holiday music from Stefani's childhood and marks Stefani and Shelton's second collaboration following their duet "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" in 2016. A Christmas track, the song includes country and pop music elements, with lyrics describing a romantic holiday season.
"You Make It Feel Like Christmas" received positive to mixed reviews from music critics. Some believed that the song was successful lyrically and would ultimately become a modern Christmas classic, while other critics found it inferior to the rest of You Make It Feel Like Christmas. In the United States, the song failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100, and instead peaked at number two on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 extension chart. It reached the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary charts for both Canada and the US. In countries such as Germany and Switzerland, it became Stefani's first track to chart in years. On the UK Singles Chart, it served as her first solo top 100 single since 2007 and has sold 200,000 copies as of December 2022. In 2020, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US.
The accompanying music video was directed by long-time Stefani collaborator Sophie Muller and released in November 2018. It features scenes of Stefani and Shelton partaking in various holiday-themed activities interspersed with ones of the two performing the song, accompanied by a big band and children dancers. Stefani's looks in the video were described as reminiscent of American actress Marilyn Monroe. The song has been performed on various television series, such as Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Voice, as well as on the 2017 American holiday special Gwen Stefani's You Make It Feel Like Christmas.
Background and release
After the release of Stefani's third solo album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like (2016), she announced her plans to release new music by the end of 2017 in July of that year. Besides the announcement, she had no further details. Following a nature walk that occurred at Shelton's residential estate in Oklahoma, Stefani felt inspired to write Christmas music and began work on a track that later became "Christmas Eve". The material created for You Make It Feel Like Christmas was recorded during the summer months of 2017, after Stefani scheduled joint studio and songwriting sessions with Justin Tranter and busbee. The latter of the three collaborated with Stefani following a suggestion from Shelton that she would work well with him. Stefani was pressured to create a holiday album by busbee that was "raw and punk and sort of classical at the same time"; accordingly, Stefani listened to the favorite holiday albums of her childhood, such as Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) and Emmylou Harris's Light of the Stable (1979), for inspiration.
On August 2, 2017, the titles of several unreleased tracks from Stefani, including "Christmas Eve", "My Gift Is You", "Under the Christmas Lights" and "You Make It Feel Like Christmas", first leaked onto the internet when they appeared as published works on BMI and GEMA, American and German music databases, respectively. Because of the titles, music critics suggested that Stefani may have been recording a holiday album, due for release in 2017. On September 18 that year, the singer took to her social media accounts and claimed that she "had something big planned for the holidays", and would release more information in the near future. The next day, Stefani revealed that she had recorded a Christmas album, confirming its title as You Make It Feel Like Christmas, and stating that the title track would be released as the lead single. It was written by Stefani, Justin Tranter, Shelton and busbee, while production was handled by busbee and Eric Valentine.