As what has become my habit every year, now is the time when I take out my stash of Christmas albums from storage to listen to my favorites and get into the happy mood of the season. And, ta-da, for the first time in so many years, actually since the boy band explosion of the ’90s, I decided to listen to This Christmas by 98 Degrees.
Remember the group? It was made up of the brothers Nick and Drew Lachey, Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons. All I could recall about them was that Nick was once married to Jessica Simpson and that the group had nice tunes like Thank God I Found You with Mariah Carey and Joe, Because Of You, The Hardest Thing, This Gift, Give Me Just One Night and My Everything.
To my surprise though, what I thought would be just another album of boy band froth turned out to be very good. This Christmas is a romantic, well-made album with warm arrangements and fantastic singing. These guys took on Bach’s Ave Maria and made it sound beautiful and they gave Little Drummer Boy, a sexy jazzy feel that is most refreshing. There are also very good originals like If Everyday Could Be Christmas and This Gift.
Get a copy and listen. I am sure that you will be surprised, too. These guys sound great. They make me wonder why there are fans around who still think that N’Sync was the better boy band.
And since I had already listened and enjoyed 98 Degrees and I could not find any Backstreet Boys Christmas album, I thought I might as well just listen to N’Sync. Home For Christmas is nothing like This Christmas but it is a young and fun collection very much in-keeping with bouncy pop songs like Bye Bye Bye, I Want You Back or Music Of My Heart. Of course, I also realized why N’Sync is considered one of the biggest boy groups of all time. It had Justin Timberlake whose mega-wattage star quality leaps at you even out of a cute mediocre album.
N’Sync was made up of Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, JC Chasez, Lance Bass and Timberlake. Home For Christmas includes Home For Christmas, Under My Tree, I Never Knew The Meaning Of Christmas, Merry Christmas Happy Holidays, The Christmas Song, I Guess It’s Christmas Time, All I Want Is You (This Christmas), The First Noel, In Love On Christmas, It’s Christmas, O Holy Night, Love’s In Our Hearts On Christmas Day, The Only Gift and Kiss Me At Midnight.
And since I was already in a good boy band mood, I decided I might as well also go to Christmas Interpretations by Boyz II Men. Thanks to the now legendary vocal prowess of this group, the album was an instant classic when it came out some 20 years ago. It was also a rarity among Christmas releases in that there are only two familiar carols included, Silent Night and Let It Snow that featured Brian McKnight. The rest were all-new originals done in the Boyz II Men’s jazzy, R&B style.
The harmonies are so tight, the phrasing so smooth and the blended tones of Wanya Morris, Nate Morris, Shawn Stockman and also of Michael McCary (since Christmas Interpretations was recorded when the group was still a quartet) are just incredible. Here is a Christmas album you would want to play all-year-through along with tunes like On Bended Knee and I’ll Make Love To You that these guys popularized.
The other cuts included, all of them equally meaningful with messages of peace and love, are Share Love, You’re Not Alone, A Joyous Song, Why Christmas, Cold December Nights, Do They Know and Who Would Have Thought.
The Jackson 5 Christmas Album by Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, Jackie and Michael Jackson — no list of boy band Christmas albums would be complete without this one. Thanks to the original track Give Love On Christmas Day, the album became a huge hit when it first came out in 1970. It remains a perennial favorite to this day and is rendered even more meaningful with the passing of Michael a few years ago. The songs here, so happy and festive, now have a tinge of sadness. Michael then was so young, so full of joy. But he grew up and changed.
Even without the fact that Michael became a phenomenal pop star though, it is evident in every song that the Jackson 5 was a very good, cohesive boy group of extraordinary power and skill. Credit, too, should also go to The Corporation, the group of songwriters, arrangers and producers who put the album together for Motown.
For those interested, a new edition of the Jackson 5 Christmas Album is available with stripped down mixes of the songs. Think Give Love On Christmas Day a cappella. There are also spoken greetings from the boys, plus Michael’s sweet solo rendition of Little Christmas Tree that is included for the first time.