I've noted previously that social media seems to have dissipated whatever market there was for novelty Christmas music. Why buy albums when you can hear all kinds of stuff in your Facebook feed, after all. So for a record label to make this investment in 2018, there needs to be an angle, like celebrities, and that brings us to Capt. Kirk/TJ Hooker/Denny Crane/The Big Giant Head himself, accompanied by everybody from Judy Collins to Henry Rollins. Unfortunately, Shatner's been doing this talk-sing acting-school-demo riff for 50 years, and the Rhino compilation Golden Throats that threw a belated and ironic spotlight on his horrific version of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was 40 years ago. Of course, Shatner has a long-standing fan base going back to "Star Trek," making this a fairly safe commercial bet, but Trekkers are an aging demographic, and this is an era in which mentions of Elvis Presley to anyone under 50 are about as relevant as mentions of Rudy Vallée. For those of you who haven't been exposed to this sort of tuneless hammy overacting before, you might get some laughs out of this, particularly as he plays off Iggy Pop on "Silent Night," Billy Gibbons on "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Rick Wakeman on "O Come O Come Emmanuel," Brad Paisley on "Blue Christmas," Joe Louis Walker on "Little Drummer Boy," Judy Collins on "White Christmas," Dani Bander on "Feliz Navidad," Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) on "Silver Bells," Todd Rundgren and Artimus Pyle on "Winter Wonderland," and Henry Rollins on two versions of "Jingle Bells," one dubbed the "punk" version. But if you know Shatner's cover of "Lucy," well, this is more of the same.
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