Llegó Navidad is a 2019
Christmas album from American
Chicano rock band
Los Lobos. The album is a diverse collection of songs that has received commercial and critical success.
Recording and release
Rhino Records approached the band with the prospect of recording a studio album,[2] which was an idea they had debated before, without recording one.[3] Los Lobos reached out to
song collectors and friends to gather a body of music that included 147 Latin Christmas songs (including one original tune), spanning several decades and the entirety of the Americas, across genres or styles as diverse as
cumbia,
cancion,
ranchera,
salsa,
son jarocho, and
Tex-Mex styles.[3][4][5] The band promoted the album with live performances of Christmas songs interspersed with their regular material while on tour.[6]
Reception
Critical reception
The editorial staff of
AllMusic Guide scored this album 4.5 out of five stars, with reviewer Mark Deming calling this a "fresh and interesting" take on standard Christmas albums that includes diverse styles and genres that displays the "passion, skill, and joy" that the band has fostered for decades.[4] In The Arts Desk, Russ Coffey rated Llegó Navidad three out of five stars, noting that the band mixes not only genres but also moods that range from serious to silly.[7] Writing for the
Associated Press, John Rogers calls this album "a holiday recording pretty much like no other".[8] Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of Financial Times scored this album four out of five stars, noting that the diverse Latin music is a "welcome twist" on the Christmas album theme.[9]
A Rolling Stone overview of 2019 Christmas albums by Connor Ratliff highly recommends Llegó Navidad, in part due to introducing the author to new music.[10] In 2022, Stephanie Kaloi wrote a listing of the 25 best Christmas albums of all time for Entertainment Weekly and included this one, writing that although it is not as familiar as some of the other music on her list, "within a few spins, each track became just as familiar as the holiday hits we've loved for years".[11]