Though everyone knows that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is the only recent pop Christmas song worthy of being include to the list of classic Christmas songs, every year, female pop stars try to create the new Great American Pop Christmas Song to spam Forever 21 with. This year, a few more tried and a few more failed.
Leona Lewis, Christmas, With Love
If Leona Lewis had been around when the soundtrack for Love Actually‘s was being put together, one of these songs would likely have bumped the many non-Christmas songs off that tracklist. Sadly, The X Factor didn’t premiere until a year after Love Actually came out, which was a missed opportunity for this British pop star. But Simon Cowell to the rescue! He decided to help Lewis out by suggesting she do a Christmas album and yes, we can turn back time: the whole thing feels like it could have been released in the early oughts. Her new track “One More Sleep” is essentially a mashup of Cascada doing “Last Christmas” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” while versions of “O Holy Night,” “Ave Maria” and “Silent Night” are an obvious ploy to show off her pipes.
Clementines in the stocking: “White Christmas” and “Mr. Right” are serviceable, though the latter is incredibly depressing in plot (“Don’t you know that I’m so lonely this Christmas?”).
A lump of coal: “Winter Wonderland,” featuring Lewis and a slew of backup singers basically screaming lyrics. “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” made me concerned about whether Lewis was getting enough oxygen into her lungs.
Rating: The drunk woman I saw sitting on the street in a pile of dog poop after her holiday party who would not accept help home
Ariana Grande, Christmas Kisses
On a continued mission to prove she is Mariah Carey reincarnated*, Ariana Grande had barely released her first album before she announced she’d be putting out a Christmas EP of four tracks, entitled Christmas Kisses. While Ariana has taken her sweet time releasing the full thing – WHAT ARE YOU DOING ARIANA, IT’S PAST THANKSGIVING – listening to it strikes one with a feeling similar to that which occurs when stepping into Dylan’s Candy Store on the Upper East Side of New York on Christmas Eve: You could die from mere sugar inhalation. The worst offender is probably “Snow In California,” a song about how Ariana wants it to snow in California, not because she doesn’t understand how global warming works but because then she’ll have “something to make him stay” (besides her cuddles, of course).
Clementines in the stocking: A blasphemously delightful “Last Christmas” that’s part cover, part remix.
A lump of coal: The cover of “Santa Baby” performed with an artist named Elizabeth Gillies (who will soon probably be famous for sleeping with a member of One D but otherwise, no idea who she is); listening to Ariana and Elizabeth’s dueling breathy whispers gives me the icks. And “Love Is Everything,” a song that proclaims “All we need is love, love underneath the tree.” If someone actually tries to give you a box of love this Christmas, feel free to respond the way you would if someone tried to give you sex coupons: with the jerk-off motion.
* For those obsessed with Ariana/Mariah, it’d be unfair not to point out that Ariana has also done a riff-for-riff cover of Mariah’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
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