Yeah, I used to rail against this 1994 album because of my extreme distaste for this formerly ubiquitous, leather-lunged diva. I decided that was not the mature path to take, about a few minutes before I found a copy of this marked way down in the used-record bin. So let me make up for lost time in being just the tiniest bit fairer to this than I have been. You've read me using the term "diva moments" in other reviews on this site, sometimes in a derogatory fashion, and believe me there are plenty of diva moments here. Essentially Mariah fits in with other R'nB artists in the approach she takes to singing, lots of over-the-top trilling that escalates as the song goes on. So I still don't recommend the ballads on this CD, like "Silent Night," "O Holy Night," "Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)," and especially skip "Jesus Born on This Day," with the obligatory kiddie chorus. But she gets credit for going to the Phil Spector well in covering "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and his version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," and both songs are done well. The closer, "Jesus Oh What a Wonderful Child," is a good gospel rave-up and "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is a solid, and popular, original that has stood the test of time. She returned to the Christmas well in the next decade, and we covered that here at Mistletunes as well.
Merry Christmas, Mariah Carey (Columbia)
Yeah, I used to rail against this 1994 album because of my extreme distaste for this formerly ubiquitous, leather-lunged diva. I decided that was not the mature path to take, about a few minutes before I found a copy of this marked way down in the used-record bin. So let me make up for lost time in being just the tiniest bit fairer to this than I have been. You've read me using the term "diva moments" in other reviews on this site, sometimes in a derogatory fashion, and believe me there are plenty of diva moments here. Essentially Mariah fits in with other R'nB artists in the approach she takes to singing, lots of over-the-top trilling that escalates as the song goes on. So I still don't recommend the ballads on this CD, like "Silent Night," "O Holy Night," "Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)," and especially skip "Jesus Born on This Day," with the obligatory kiddie chorus. But she gets credit for going to the Phil Spector well in covering "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and his version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," and both songs are done well. The closer, "Jesus Oh What a Wonderful Child," is a good gospel rave-up and "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is a solid, and popular, original that has stood the test of time. She returned to the Christmas well in the next decade, and we covered that here at Mistletunes as well.
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