Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Tis the season and Taylor Hicks wants to be sure we’re all in the holiday mood.

The Season 5 Idol champ released a version of “Silent Night” on Friday.

There’s more music coming. According to his website, Taylor is planning a new album — his first in years — for early 2016.

And in case you missed the news, American Idol’s Season 5 champ recently re-released two pre-show albums, making them available as digital downloads for the first time.

Those two albums include “In Your Time,” first released in 1997 when Taylor was 21. It features seven tracks, including a previously unreleased version of a song called “Somehow.”

The other album is “Under the Radar,” which dates from 2005. It has eight tracks, including a new song that was never released, “No Place I’d Rather Be.”

I’ve embedded both of the new tracks below.

Oh, and “In Your Time” also features a seven-minute cover of “Georgia.”

No precise release date has been announced for that new album, which will be Taylor’s first since he released “The Distance” in early 2009.

It’ll likely be timed to coincide with a spike in interest in Idol as the show embarks on its 15th and final season.

Since Idol, Taylor has also starred as Teen Angel in a national tour of “Grease” and, more recently, completed a long-term residency as an entertainer in Las Vegas.