Beyond Wham! and Elton, Guardian writers from across the generations select the songs that conjure the personal magic and memories of the season

I’m always fascinated by the ways in which my generation manage to participate in the circulation of music. Amateur TikTok edits resurrect forgotten gems and turn obscure starlets into sensations; home producers fabricate entire albums if their favourite rapper doesn’t release enough. Such is the case with Doom Xmas, the brainchild of Grammy-winning Spanish producer Cookin’ Soul, which refashions the work of late cult rapper MF Doom into Christmas music. There are filthy Grinch soundtrack flips, hectic Latin Christmas skits and a chopped-and-screwed Nat King Cole that’ll change the way you hear The Christmas Song.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Playing a mix of traditional folk and radically rearranged acoustic Led Zeppelin classics, the former Zep frontman is in fine voice – but also happy to step out of the spotlight

Between songs, Robert Plant describes his latest project, Saving Grace, as hailing “from the west side of common sense”. It’s a self-effacing remark but he has a point. Most rock stars of his vintage and stature (78 next year, somewhere between 200m and 300m albums sold with Led Zeppelin) would be out there underlining their status by touring the hits. But as anyone who has followed Plant’s serpentine post-Zeppelin career will tell you, the straightforward option doesn’t seem to hold great appeal for him.

So Saving Grace are a band assembled from musicians local to his home in Shropshire – though it isn’t entirely clear if Plant is joking when he suggests he found multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley working in the local tourist information office. Their oeuvre is an intriguing stew of traditional folk songs (The Cuckoo, As I Roved Out); covers that pay testament to Plant’s famously catholic tastes (Everybody’s Song by Low rubs shoulders with It’s a Beautiful Day Today by 60s psych heroes Moby Grape); and a scattering of Led Zeppelin tracks that you could fairly describe as radically rearranged: both Ramble On and Four Sticks now heavily feature an accordion, with the low end provided not by a bass guitar but a cello. Moreover, this is an evening in which one of the most renowned frontmen in rock history – whose voice is in quite astonishing nick – seems happy to regularly cede the spotlight, and effectively act as a backing singer for Worley and vocalist Suzi Dian.