6 holiday albums to put you into festive gear
Avoid the rush and set your festive playlist now. Here are some tunes you and yours will love this festive season.
Today we kick start the festive season with a music selection that will get the whole family singing, dancing and maybe crying (after a few drinks).
These new albums will make sure to kill that awkward silence at the dinner table or put a pep in your step at your office Christmas party.
From Kenny Rogers to Kylie Minogue and even LeAnn Rimes, you wont be disappointed with these catchy jingles.
Here are 6 holiday albums to get you in the festive spirit this year:
1. Kenny Rogers - Once Again It's Christmas (Warner)
If country legend Kenny Rogers sticks to his guns, Once Again it's Christmas will be his sixth and final holiday album, and bittersweet nostalgia infuses all 11 tracks.
The 77-year-old crooner recently announced his retirement and farewell tour, so this mix of mostly classic carols with traditional arrangements is one fans will savor.
His voice is a little softer and raspier than on his first Christmas album 34 years ago, but it fits with selections that make you want to curl up by the fire with a bourbon eggnog with the ones you love.
2. Kylie Minogue - Kylie Christmas (Warner/Parlophone)
Kylie Minogue's first Christmas album is a very mixed bag of big band arrangements, awkward duets, better-than-expected novelty originals and evergreens hardly suited to her vocal limits.
Frank Sinatra is back for a shared Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and his input really does sound recorded in the great beyond. Iggy Pop croaks through The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping, a very British-sounding, quality American pop tune, while James Corden lifts Yazoo's Only You, hardly a holiday song. But it's great either way.
3. The Braxtons - Braxton Family Christmas (Def Jam)
The Christmas album from Toni Braxton and her sisters will only make you wish they were working on a proper, full-length R&B project.
Braxton Family Christmas is soulful and warm and the sisters' harmonies are the album's highlight. They sound like angels on O Holy Night (Acappella) and This Christmas, which opens the 8-track album. And Tamar Braxton, the youngest of the family clan, hits a high note so beautifully on Mary, Did You Know? you'll have to replay it again and again.
Toni, Tamar, Towanda, Trina and Tracy's voices are so similar sometimes it's hard to tell who's who. But it doesn't matter because though there are five of them, they sound united — like a real group should.
4. Train - Christmas in Tahoe (Sunken Forest)
Train's 15-track holiday album jauntily careens through six-plus decades of sometimes obscure Christmassy songs, from covers of Elvis' Santa Bring My Baby Back (to Me) to British pop singer Tracey Thorn's Tinsel and Lights.
In between are a soaring version of the classic O Holy Night, with frontman Pat Monahan sharing vocals with a background chorus, and three Train originals — all with a contemporary Top 40 feel.
Train's own Christmas Island has a calypso beat and catchy vocals — "Give me Christmas on an island, see me smilin" — and will be the one fans who can't stop humming.
5. Various Artists - The Classic Christmas '80s Album (Sony Legacy)
This compilation brings together some of the most memorable Christmas rock songs from the 1980s, including some you can't get enough of, and some you'll probably be able to tolerate again only after hitting the bourbon eggnog hard (I'll leave it up to you to decide which is which.)
No Christmas compilation, particularly one from the '80s, would be complete without The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping and Wham's Last Christmas, and both show up early here. Run-DMC's crossover holiday hit Christmas In Hollis,
Whitney Houston's - Do You Hear What I Hear?, Hall & Oates - Jingle Bell Rock and Dave Edmunds' - Run Rudolph Run.
6. LeAnn Rimes - Today Is Christmas (Kobalt)
LeAnn Rimes mixes spirited songs that showcase the holiday cheer with more serene, thoughtful songs of the season on Today Is Christmas.
The album features fun takes on family carols like Must Be Santa and Frosty the Snowman with original songs I Still Believe In Santa Claus and the title track.
There's also a beautifully classic rendition of Little Drummer Boy.
The album has a mixture of sad and up-beat songs that will definitely balance out the festive cheer, bringing meaning and fun to the holiday season.
Get your dancing shoes ready and get ready to slow dance and to do the slide.
Do you have any suggestions to add to the list? Let us know.