With the third installment of the hugely popular Very Special Christmas franchise, things were shaken up quite a bit. Gone were the ballads by the likes of Wilson Phillips, Extreme, and others, replaced by a more alternative and hip-hop kind of feel.<\/p>\n
This is probably the most eclectic of all the records, but that also makes it one of the best. Only this could have Sting doing a very kid-friendly \u201cI Saw Three Ships\u201d alongside No Doubt doing \u201cOi To The World,\u201d a Vandals cover and one of their last \u2018original\u2019 tracks before they went all pop and lost all credibility. \u201cOi\u201d has ended up becoming kind of a Christmas standard at this point, heard on Xmas Muzak all across the country.<\/p>\n
Not everything here is a winner, though. You can skip the overloaded \u201cSanta Baby.\u201d It was never one of my favorites in the first place, but the addition of Rev. Run, Puff Daddy, Mase, and Snoop Dogg (not to mention numerous others) just drags the proceedings down a notch. Meanwhile, Sheryl Crow singing \u201cBlue Christmas\u201d is just unnecessary and isn\u2019t even notable.<\/p>\n
But something like The Smashing Pumpkins\u2019 orchestral \u201cChristmastime\u201d and Blues Traveler\u2019s last great song \u201cChristmas\u201d are just great Xmas songs that leave you with a nice warm feeling after repeated listens. And who could forget Steve Winwood doing \u201cChristmas Is Now Drawing Near at Hand\u201d or Chris Cornell\u2019s first released solo track, a take on \u201cAve Maria\u201d with backing by Eleven? There\u2019s even some stuff for the older folks, like Enya and Natalie Merchant. All in all, there is a lot here for all different music fans, and that\u2019s the sign of a really good Christmas album.<\/p>\n
They continued making Very Special Christmas albums over the next couple of years, but this remained the last great one before it was overtaken by crap and unoriginality. So take these songs, share them with friends and family, and get that warm feeling in your chest whenever you hear a really good Christmas song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5827],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-44714","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44714"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}