NEW YORK, NY.- There is no one correct way to celebrate the holiday season in song. For some, reverence is key. But often the best Yuletide numbers are the ones that fiddle around with tradition, taking the familiar components of joy and generosity and remixing them into something silly, salacious or downright odd.
Adam Blackstone, A Legacy Christmas
Adam Blackstone, who has been a bassist and musical director for Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake as well as many television shows, revels in his jazz background on his own Legacy albums. A Legacy Christmas merges brassy, swinging big-band arrangements with electronically tweaked R&B, and its packed with guests: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Boyz II Men, Andra Day. There are glossy, muscular revamps of songs like Lil Drummer Boy (which has BJ the Chicago Kid singing alongside Blackstones melodic bass) and Someday at Christmas (with Robert Randolphs slide guitar), as well as Blackstones own songs, including the neo-Motown Christmas Kisses, which has Blackstone rapping alongside Keke Palmer, who sings like shes fronting the Jackson 5. JON PARELES
Brandy, Christmas With Brandy
Brandy leads with angst on her album Christmas With Brandy, which includes six songs she co-wrote including the opener, Feels Different. The moody, minor-key track leans into a deep post-breakup loneliness that hurts the worst around Christmas, even though when Im lovesick, youre toxic. But the rest of the album is cheerier and sultrier, like her upbeat, retro-styled Christmas Everyday and Christmas Gift (a duet with her daughter, Syrai) and the slow-motion come-on of Christmas Party for Two. The familiar songs play up Brandys misty tone and melismatic audacity. Her versions of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Mel Tormés The Christmas Song and even Deck the Halls are gauzy and leisurely. And who but Brandy would, in Jingle Bells, make an 11-note flourish out of way? PARELES
Sabrina Carpenter, Fruitcake
The rising pop singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter brings her charmingly conversational and occasionally humorous sensibility to the six-song EP Fruitcake, her first holiday-themed release. Though she indulges in a straightforward, breathily sung White Christmas, the EPs highlights are its irreverent originals, like A Nonsense Christmas (a holiday remix of Carpenters 2022 hit), the sleek, sassy Is It New Years Yet? and Cindy Lou Who, a piano ballad that playfully imagines the sweetest girl in Whoville as a romantic rival: The snows gonna fall and the trees gonna glisten, Carpenter sings. And Im gonna puke at the thought of you kissin. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Cher, Christmas
Chers economically titled new album Christmas is an eclectic mix of holiday standards (a rollicking Run Rudolph Run, an especially lustful Santa Baby) and upbeat, electro-pop originals tailor-made for the woman who sang Believe (the strobe-lit DJ Play a Christmas Song, the fist-pumping Angels in the Snow). The guest list is star-studded and wide-ranging: Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé and Darlene Love all drop by to duet with Cher on their own holiday classics, while Cyndi Lauper provides an assist on Put a Little Holiday in Your Heart, a country-tinged Christmas tune first recorded by LeAnn Rimes. But the albums most memorably bonkers moment is surely Drop Top Sleigh Ride, a campy party anthem featuring a pun-stuffed rap verse from Tyga. The holidays just arent the holidays until youve heard Cher sing, Turn it up, its a vibe, its Christmas. ZOLADZ
Robert Glasper, In December
Keyboardist Robert Glasper is an expert in both abstruse jazz harmonies and sleek hip-hop grooves; hes also a well-connected collaborator. He brings all those skills to Christmas songs on In December, a musicianly rumination on the season; its only available on Apple Music. Old carols get elaborate new chromatic convolutions and alternate melodies, while in their new songs, Glasper and his singers consider holiday tensions. In Make It Home, PJ Morton and Sevyn Streeter portray a couple wondering if they can possibly reconcile for Christmas; December, written by Glasper and Andra Day, cycles through a year of seasonal anxieties and longings. And in Memories With Mama, Tarriona Ball, who leads Tank and the Bangas, confides in deep-toned spoken words about how Christmas has changed since her childhood shes nostalgic, but realistic. PARELES
Samara Joy, A Joyful Holiday
The resonant, low-end power of Samara Joys voice really emerges on her version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Me. A Motown-era number sung sweetly by the Supremes and Stevie Wonder, its comforting molasses in Joys hands; at one point, she lingers over twinkle, toggling back and forth eee-yuh-eee-yuh-eee-yuh a caress and a promise. Thats the highlight of A Joyful Holiday, the first seasonal release from this sometimes startling jazz vocalist, who won best new artist at this years Grammys. See also her take on Warm in December, once sung by Julie London, which she renders as the most refined, stately and wise of come-ons. JON CARAMANICA
Jon Pardi, Merry Christmas From Jon Pardi
For the past decade Jon Pardi has been, quite successfully, a country singer mindful of how the country singers before him conducted themselves. Hes a lightly unruly traditionalist, with an ear that favors Texas and Bakersfield and the, um, funkier sides of honky-tonk Nashville. So naturally, his first holiday album is a collection of frisky covers and originals that add just the faintest tweak to the canon. His take on Buck Owens Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy is cheeky and loose, and Ive Been Bad, Santa sung a couple of years ago by Australian pop star Peach PRC is a flirtatious duet with Pillbox Patti. Reindeer is a slow-walk heartbreaker about getting left behind by someone you love during the jolly season: Might be a white Christmas, but all this snow just feels like rain, dear. And on the lighthearted Beer for Santa, he swaps out the milk and cookies under the tree for something harder, then avers, I might stay up and have one with him, too. CARAMANICA
The Philly Specials, A Philly Special Christmas Special
Last year, three offensive linemen who play for the Philadelphia Eagles Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson stunned the football world by putting out a surprisingly competent Christmas EP as the Philly Specials. This season, theyre upping the ante with a full album, featuring cameos from Philadelphia musical luminaries including Patti LaBelle, Amos Lee and Waxahatchee. Mailata a 6-foot-8 left tackle who last year appeared as Thingamabob on The Masked Singer is the star of the show, holding his own with LaBelle on a duet of This Christmas and nailing that high note at the end of All I Want for Christmas Is You, but Johnson also impresses with his resonant country croon on a cover of Willie Nelsons Pretty Paper. As for Kelce? Well, as Philly fans already know, hes got a lot of heart. And, for a spirited reworking of the Pogues most famous song, here retitled Fairytale of Philadelphia, he recruits perhaps the most high-profile guest of them all, his brother Travis, who sings approximately as well as his girlfriend can play professional football. ZOLADZ
Gregory Porter, Christmas Wish
Jazz singer Gregory Porter brings his kindly baritone and a social conscience to his Christmas album. He reaches back to vintage Motown for the anti-war, pro-equality Someday at Christmas, and three songs of his own recognize troubles he wants to rise above for the season. In Everythings Not Lost, he wills himself toward year-end optimism despite all this misery and children in fear. And with the surging gospel of Christmas Wish, he recalls the lessons in generosity his mother taught. Most of the backing uses genteel string arrangements, but in Christmas Waltz, with a jazz trio, he reminds listeners how he can swing. PARELES
Wheatus, Just a Dirtbag Christmas
Skip the clever and fun and totally worthy originals on this EP: Youre here for Christmas Dirtbag, the Yuletide updating of Teenage Dirtbag, the 2000 debut single from the Long Island punk-pop band Wheatus. The original is somehow both a zeitgeist-definer and a curio. This updating morphs the main character into someone passed over by Santa, perhaps a fate more cruel than being ignored by the girl who mesmerizes him in the original. But here, in a holiday spirit, theres a twist it turns out Santas a dirtbag, too, and hes bearing gifts after all: Ive got two tickets to AC/DC, baby/After-show party at CBGB. CARAMANICA
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.