| Xmas Meter key | |
 |
= Ho ho ho! |
 |
= Deck the halls! |
 |
= Pass the ‘nog, dude! |
 |
= Frosty! |
 |
= Silent night, please! |
 |
= Christmas puke! |
| Artist: album title (label) | Concept | Jingle Bells | Batman Smells | Percentage of standards | XMas Meter |
| Rosie O’Donnell: A Rosie Christmas (Columbia)
|
On this turkey, daytime talk’s most shameless ham teams with some of pop’s biggest plums to knock the stuffing out of your favorite holiday classics | Perfect for that Rosie fan in your life | Celine Dion? Cher? ‘N Sync? Donny Osmond? Yeccchhh. Her media juggernaut needs to end somewhere—like here! | 64.3% (71.4% if George Michael’s “Last Christmas”—sung by Darren Haynes of Savage Garden—counts) | |
| Various Artists: Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics (American/Columbia)
|
The fine, God-fearing folks behind South Park present their version of the sounds of the holiday season | Funnier than such utter juvenilia has any right to be | Not quite as funny without the dithering animated construction-paper cutouts to help you along | A surprising 55.6%, though several have been given new, non-standard lyrics, e.g. Cartman’s “Here’s a little dreidel/That’s small and made of clay/But I’m not gonna play with it/’Cause dreidel’s fucking gay” | |
| Various Artists: English Village Carols (Smithsonian Folkways)
|
A highly specialized tramp through the pubs of Sheffield, England, with drunken carollers leading the way; background noise adds to the ambience | Drunken carollers lead the way, mostly singing unaccompanied; it’s charming in small doses | It’s not much fun unless you’ve already downed a few pints | 100%, though you won’t have heard many of these traditionals unless you were raised in a pub | |
| Various Artists: My Christmas Album (MCA)
|
R&B stars, soul divas, smooth jazzers, and funk up-and-comers salute the season | Mary J. Blige, Rahsaan Patterson, and Amertria come through with pulsing, soulful Christmas tunes | Nearly everyone else gets all Jesus-crazy, with piano music that’s straight outta Nordstrom | 75%, though one original may become a standard: Avant’s silky “Christmas Came to the Ghetto” | |
| Dan Fogelberg: The First Christmas Morning (Morning Sky)
|
The man who brought you “Auld Lang Syne” goes for a Renaissance feel on his indie Xmas disc | Dan plays a mean guitar, and the tracks that highlight his picking skills create a warm, folksy feel | When he purses his lips and sings, it sounds as if he’s got a candy cane stuck up his butt | 57%, though Dan edits
the words to some of the traditionals included here |
|
| 98 Degrees: This Christmas(Universal)
|
Everybody’s third- (or fourth-) favorite boy-band make like Santa and sleigh the masses | It’ll make the little girls swoon | It’ll make the rest of you do something else | 63.6% (three originals—one reprised—written by the boys’ handlers) | |
| Jimi Hendrix: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (Experience Hendrix/MCA)
|
Spend your holiday season turning on, tuning in, and getting Experienced | World’s greatest guitar player; includes “Three Little Bears,” a Hendrix original issued on 1972’s War Heroes and out of print ever since | Far from essential Hendrix makes this for-collectors-only | 67% (50% if you discount the fact that one of the three tracks here is an edited version of another; 75% if you count individual compositions—one song is a medley of two traditional Xmas songs plus “Auld Lang Syne,” thus the Happy New Year of the EP’s title) |  |
| Blowfly: Blowfly Does XXX-Mas (Pandisc)
|
Potty-mouthed old-school ghetto comic adds bad words to popular Christmas tunes | Perfect for that 12-year-old nephew who can’t stop laughing at that one joke whose punchline is “European” | Cheap jokes, cheaper packaging | 92.9%, though the back cover states, “All songs . . . are parodies of popular Christmas Carols” (“Baby It’s Cold Outside” does not qualify as a Christmas standard) | |
| Low: Christmas (Kranky)
|
The world’s slowest, most melancholic indie-rock band bucks up and tries to exhibit some Christmas cheer | The opening track, Just Like Christmas, is the fastest Low song ever; the whole disc shimmers like an icicle and rings like a sleigh bell (and “Blue Christmas” is exquisite) | If I hear one more version of “The Little Drummer Boy,” I’ll kill everyone | 50% | |
| Ringo Starr: I Wanna Be Santa Claus (Mercury)
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Once lovable, now annoying Beatle drummer ties his famously bad voice to a bunch of Christmas-themed originals, and, of course, “The Little Drummer Boy” | Possibly the only Christmas album with bagpipes and tabla; Zak Starkey’s nowhere to be seen | Aw, Ringo, you still can’t sing | 42%; yes, Ringo wrote or co-wrote more than half of these tunes | |
| Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song (Capitol)
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The classic, digitally remastered so that a scratchy record won’t mar your annual Christmas date with Nat | Nat’s voice can still melt snowmen, humans, pets; “O Holy Night” is guaranteed to induce chills | That pesky daughter Natalie disinters dad one more time for a post-mortem collaboration on “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)” | 100%, minus a few spoken-word bits by Nat | |
| Various Artists: Festival of Light (Six Degrees)
|
Jewish musicians celebrate Hanukkah in song | Diversifies your musical choices for the holiday season; contains fine selections from the Klezmatics and They Might Be Giants | Too new-agey too often | Only 25%, though there really aren’t that many Hanukkah standards | |
