Alanis Morissette Announces First Holiday Album 'Good Weather for Immaculate Conception'

Alanis Morissette has never been one to follow a predictable path, and her first holiday album is no exception. Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, a title only she could have conjured, arrives November 6 via Virgin's Epiphany imprint, gathering the Christmas covers she has released sporadically since 2020 alongside new recordings, two original songs, and a guest list that ranges from Brandi Carlile to the comedy duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short.

A Holiday Habit Turned Full-Length Statement

Since 2020, Morissette has made a quiet tradition of surfacing each December with a freshly recorded holiday standard. Those one-off renditions now form the backbone of Good Weather for Immaculate Conception, which expands the project into a proper album. The tracklist moves from sacred territory—"O Holy Night," "What Child Is This?," "Ave Maria," "Silent Night"—to modern pop yuletide staples like "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and Wham!'s "Last Christmas," with detours into "Little Drummer Boy" and "O Tannenbaum."

Two songs are billed as originals: "To an Empath at Christmas Time" and "Christmas on the Dancefloor," titles that suggest Morissette's longstanding interest in emotional introspection and, occasionally, letting loose. The album's lead offering is a new cover of "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" featuring both Brandi Carlile and Steve Martin—a pairing that reads as unlikely on paper but makes a certain sense given the intersecting orbits the three artists have occupied.

A Guest List That Defies Expectation

The features on Good Weather for Immaculate Conception are as eclectic as Morissette's own catalog. Alongside Carlile and Martin, the record includes contributions from Amythyst Kiah (on "Momma Mary"), Joy Oladokun (on "Silent Night"), Trans Voices (on "O Tannenbaum"), and Martin Short (on "Merry Christmas").

The comedy presence of Martin and Short is less random than it might appear. Morissette has long moved between the worlds of alternative rock, musical theater, and mainstream entertainment—she earned a Tony Award nomination for her work on the Jagged Little Pill musical and has contributed songs to film soundtracks throughout her career. Sharing an album with two of the most beloved figures in North American comedy fits a career that has never stayed inside one lane.

An Incredibly Busy Year

The holiday album caps one of the most eventful stretches of Morissette's career. At the start of the year, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame—a recognition that formally enshrines a body of work that began with 1995's Jagged Little Pill, one of the best-selling albums of all time and the record that made her, at the time, the youngest winner of the Grammy for Album of the Year.

More recently, she made a surprise appearance at Olivia Rodrigo's inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival, joining Rodrigo onstage to duet on "Ironic"—a full-circle moment between the 1990s alt-rock generation and its most prominent modern inheritor. And in July, Brandi Carlile covered Morissette's "Uninvited" at the 2026 Newport Folk Festival; the two artists then performed the song together at Red Rocks last month, deepening a creative partnership that now extends onto the holiday record.

From 'Jagged Little Pill' to 'Good Weather'

Announcing a Christmas album might once have seemed like an odd move for the artist behind "You Oughta Know" and "Hand in My Pocket"—but Morissette's career has always resisted easy categorization. She followed Jagged Little Pill with the experimental, highly anticipated Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie in 1998, the same year her City of Angels single "Uninvited" won two Grammy Awards and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song. Later came Under Rug Swept, which she produced herself and which won her the Jack Richardson Producer of the Year Award, then So-Called Chaos, Flavors of Entanglement, Havoc and Bright Lights, 2020's Such Pretty Forks in the Road, and 2022's The Storm Before the Calm.

Along the way she has sold more than 60 million records, collected seven Grammy Awards and 14 Juno Awards, and set a record for the most number ones on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart among female soloists, group leaders, or duo members. Her songs "Thank U"—written after a trip to India and released in October 1998—and "Hands Clean" helped define the confessional singer-songwriter mode that remains her signature.

That history makes a holiday album feel less like a detour and more like a natural extension. A Christmas record is, at its core, a collection of covers, interpretations, and shared traditions—territory Morissette has explored before, from soundtrack work to theatrical adaptations of her own material. Framing the project around gratitude and reflection, as the originals' titles suggest, is consistent with an artist whose most enduring songs often document inner transformation.

What to Expect

With 14 tracks spanning traditional carols, modern pop standards, and two new compositions, Good Weather for Immaculate Conception looks poised to become a staple of the season for listeners who want their holiday music with a little emotional intelligence and an unexpected guest or two. The album arrives November 6 on Virgin's Epiphany imprint.

For longtime fans, it's another reminder that Morissette—inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2005 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year—remains one of the few artists of her generation still willing to surprise. For newcomers drawn in by the Carlile collaboration or the Rodrigo duet, it's an invitation to explore a catalog that continues to reward curiosity.