Republic Records release a holiday album of familiar festive songs performed by Jessie J. The album includes the classics, 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town' and 'Silent Night', produced by the legendary David Foster. As well as special collaborations of 'Winter Wonderland' featuring Boyz II Men and 'The Christmas Song' featuring Babyface...

I love Christmas albums. I really do. With releases like this, it's a chance to hear your favourite artist put their own twist on festive favourites. On This Christmas Day Jessie J's does a good job of balancing the album with a mix of traditional and more adventurous interpretations of old favourites.

Her rendition of 'The Man With the Bag' is one of the highlights, and 'Rocking Around the Christmas Tree' is a pretty good reworking of Brenda Lee's original. 'Jingle Bell Rock', however, didn't quite work for me. 'Jingle Bells' has been brought up to date, and actually works quite well.

But the biggest turn off for me was that at the end of some of the songs she utters some pointless phrase - meant to be fun and endearing, but just sounds annoying. For example at the end of 'Winter Wonderland' she quips: "Anyone want some eggnog?"

Overall, the album is well balanced between fairly faithful rerecordings and songs with a modern twist. While this is certainly an album Jessie J fans will cherish, there's also enough here to ensure it's also an album that all the family can enjoy at Christmas.

Track listing:

01. Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town
02. Man With The Bag
03. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
04. Jingle Bell Rock
05. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer/Jingle Bells
06. Let It Snow
07. Winter Wonderland feat. Boyz II Men
08. The Christmas Song feat. Babyface
09. This Christmas Day
10. White Christmas
11. Silent Night

7

Nick Smithson