The Christmas Present, Robbie Williams (Columbia)

This guy is one of the biggest singing stars in England but he's never been able to carve out that status for himself here in my native USA despite having lived in Los Angeles since 2006. For 2019, he took a cannonball dive into the Christmas market with a two-disc album consisting of a mix of familiar tunes and also some never-before-heard numbers, and he backstopped all that with a liberal seasoning of duets with other famous people like Rod Stewart, Helene  Fischer, Jamie Cullum, Bryan Adams, and Tyson Fury. The double-disc structure is there for a reason; the first disc is entirely composed of Williams doing his Michael Buble impression with cabaret/lounge arrangements of such tunes as "Let it Snow," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," "Rudolph," "Winter Wonderland," and some originals like "Coco's Christmas Lullaby," "Let's Not Go Shopping,", and "It's a Wonderful Life." Fischer provides the duet voice on "Santa Baby" so we don't have to be grossed out by a guy singing it solo, and I'm not sure we needed a Nelson Riddle arrangement of Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody." The second disc is more of the contemporary pop-rock that made Williams' career, with a larger selection of non-standard tunes like "Snowflakes," "Time For Change," "Idlewild," "Fairytales" with Stewart (not the Pogues classic), "Bad Sharon," "Happy Birthday Jesus Christ," and "New Year's Day." There's also a duet with Adams on "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," and if you manage to score the bonus tracks, a version of "I Believe in Father Christmas," the faintly ska-ish "Merry Kissmas," and another Stewart duet on the non-holiday "It Takes Two." My feeling is that Williams should have released the two discs in successive years and pitched them to the likely audiences for each.