Recent holiday recordings

HALLELUJAH SISTER...

This is copied from an MSN.com article:
"I like traditional Christmas music, the kind with an organ and a boys’ choir, or maybe some Bing Crosby for variety. I can’t stand the hastily recorded, cynically marketed pop-music versions of Christmas carols. “Little Drummer Boy” isn’t a great song, but it’s even worse in the hands of 98 Degrees. A boy band feigning awe at the Christ child while struggling to imbue the already-silly “pa rum pa pum pum”s with gravitas? And the beauty of “Silent Night” comes from the simplicity of the melody, but nobody told Mariah Carey, who felt obliged to over-decorate the song with about a thousand trills, and squeaks audible only to dolphins. Pop Christmas albums exist so that record companies can sell more product to undiscriminating fans, and that plan can have unintentionally hilarious results—the Brady Bunch’s rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful” is a national treasure of tuneless kitsch. Jessica Simpson’s noir-nightclub-meets-Betty-Boop rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” on the other hand, is creepy—and superfluous. If Destiny’s Child or any other pop act simply must dream of a White Christmas, I’d rather they did so in private. — Sarah D. Bunting"

AMEN!