“We chose to cover ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ because it's a beautiful song,” Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell tells Apple Music of the band's submission to Carols Covered—Apple Music’s collection of Christmas standards updated by contemporary artists. “I like the lyrics, but most of all, I like the melody. And when I was listening to it, I thought that there was something quite pop about the melody, and I was interested to hear what it would sound like if it was done in a more poppy way.” The song, most famous in versions by Gustav Holst and Harold Darke, was first a poem by Christina Rossetti originally titled “A Christmas Carol.”