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Apple’s 2025 holiday ad features woodland animals singing “Friends” by Flight of the Conchords. We explain the hidden dark humor and the predator-prey irony.
It is officially the holiday season on TV. John Travolta is back as Santa Claus, Amazon is re-airing the old ladies sledding, and of course, Apple has returned with a new Christmas commercial for the iPhone 17. As usual, they bring an original concept paired with catchy music. You can watch the full ad below.
The spot is titled “A Critter Carol” and features a charming collection of woodland animals singing happily about how friendship is a gift. However, there is a subtle detail that many viewers missed: the song in the Apple commercial is actually something more than a simple anthem to the beauty of friendship.
What is the Song in the Apple Holiday Commercial?
The song you hear in the Apple 2025 Christmas commercial is a reinterpretation of Friends, a track created by the New Zealand duo Flight of the Conchords. You can listen to the original version below:
![[LQ] "Friends" - Flight of the Conchords](https://auralcrave.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FXVoCJJFuS60%2F0.jpg)
For those unfamiliar with them, Flight of the Conchords is a group specialized in ironic humor and comedy music. Their songs are incredibly catchy but feature peculiar lyrics that often hide unexpected meanings. They starred in a cult HBO series that aired from 2007 to 2009 and have been active since 1998, though their output has slowed down significantly in recent years.
“Friends” is a perfect example of their humor. On the surface, it seems like a song entirely dedicated to friendship. Or perhaps there is something else to be read between the lines—something that Apple has subtly revisited in this commercial?
The Lyrical Irony: Are They Real Friends?
The lyrics of the original song are adapted in the Apple commercial with small changes to fit the lives of the woodland animals. However, even the original version of “Friends” lists things friends do selected with a touch of irreverence: driving them home when they are dead drunk, telling them they have food on their face, asking for money and never paying it back… it is the good and the bad of friendship, in short. Having friends is nice, but not always. And anyway, true friendship doesn’t exactly align with the shallow examples brought up in the song, right?
Now, consider the protagonists of the Apple commercial. There are small rodents, birds, and critters, but also a huge bear and a hungry wolf. They are all singing about friendship together, but the visual joke is dark: between verses, the wolf actually devours the rat, only to open his mouth and sing “He’s my friend!”
The Visual Joke: Predators and Prey
What we see in the Apple Christmas 2025 commercial is essentially a forced truce. It is triggered the moment the animals find a new iPhone abandoned in the snow and get the idea to film themselves together in a video.
Off-camera, the truth is that these animals would devour each other at the first opportunity. But hey, the world is watching, it’s a musical! Let’s show how friendly we are, all together, in the name of the Christmas spirit.
There is a specific verse in the original song—obviously excluded from the Apple commercial—that perfectly clarifies the real spirit of the track. In “Friends,” Flight of the Conchords sing:
My Uncle John had a special friend
They dressed alike, his name was Ben
I’ve never seen two friends like them
They were very very friendly men
The song even takes a pause after those lines to convey the awkwardness of the situation. It is a strangeness that children might miss, but adults understand perfectly: putting a verse like that in a song about friendship sends a precise message about how “authentic” the intention to celebrate friends really is in this track.
This mirrors the core idea of the Apple commercial, where a mismatched group of animals claim to be friends with one another. And they sing:
If you cross the road and a truck struck you
I’ll scrape you up and reconstruct you
I’ll cheer you up if you’re depressed
If they hunt you down I’ll avenge your death(…ok, that’s a bit… dark! Ha ha!)
Apple has therefore managed to achieve the impossible: creating a Christmas commercial that sounds cheerful and carefree, yet wraps an ironic musical reference and lyrical nuances that only a savvy mind can catch—all disguised as a group of animals in the snow, almost like a Disney movie. And amidst all this, they showed us the effect a new iPhone can have: just a moment ago they were animals threatening each other, and now… Friendship is a gift.
We get it, Apple. We get it.
