“It’s clichéd to be cynical at Christmas,” as the great British band Half Man Half Biscuit once sang. And it’s true: no one likes a Christmas killjoy, the sort of person who humbugs about too-early festive decorations at the mall, and the scarcity of non-vegetarian mince pies, all the while fastidiously updating their Amazon.com Christmas wishlists to include the newest Battlestar Galactica DVD, or the latest iteration of Grand Theft Punch a Prostitute, or whatever it is the kids are playing these days. (And by “kids,” I mean “grown men.” And by “grown men,” I mean “me.”)
The music industry, on the other hand — which runs on cynicism the same way cars run on gas, or sharks run on skinny-dipping teenagers — isn’t so easy to be sanguine about. Take Elvis Presley’s Christmas Duets (Sony, **), which ruins a perfectly pleasant bunch of Elvis yuletide numbers by turning them into beyond-the-grave pairings with the likes of Amy Grant, Anne Murray and Olivia Newton-John. True, if he were alive today, Elvis — who never saw a dollar he couldn’t eat — might well have released an album just like Christmas Duets. But why bother, when you could have the original Elvis’ Christmas Album for half the price, and with 100% less Carrie Underwood?
In her liner notes to A New Thought For Christmas (Island, *), Melissa Etheridge has the temerity to pretend to be embarrassed about releasing a Christmas CD (“A Christmas record, really?”). But what she really should have been embarrassed about was her cover of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” oversung in the American Idol ballad style — and my current nomination for Worst Single Recording of Anno Domini. Neil Sedaka’s two-disc The Miracle of Christmas (Razor & Tie, **) is equally shameless; given that Sedaka is Jewish, the album has a pleasing (if unintentional) ironic undertow. Although in the Jews-for-Jesus stakes, it’s no Barbara Streisand’s Christmas Memories.
We Wish You a Metal Christmas (Armoury, **), a set of festive classics-gone-metal, has an impressive cast list (including Alice Cooper, Dave Grohl and, er, Ronnie James Dio), but the joke gets tiresome quickly. At the other end of the unlistenability spectrum, there’s I’ll Be Home For Christmas (Razor & Tie, *) from Brian McKnight — or as it might more reasonably be titled¸ Please Stay the Fuck Away for Christmas — which features this year’s most spine-curdling smooth-jazz reinterpretation of Sammy Cahn’s “Let it Snow.”
Far more successful in the smooth-jazz playoffs are Harry Connick Jr.’s What a Night! (Sony, ****) which has a cute Vince Guaraldi–style cover of “We Three Kings,” and Tony Bennett Featuring the Count Basie Band’s A Swingin’ Christmas (Sony, *****), whose succinct title is Snakes on a Plane–accurate, and showcases some thrilling keyboard runs from Monty Alexander in the old Basie style. Which is nothing to be cynical about.
