Coming on the heels of Kelly Clarkson’s contentious divorce from Brandon Blackstock, the singer’s second holiday collection, When Christmas Comes Around…, effectively doubles as a breakup album. The bulk of the set’s original songs find Clarkson singing the yuletide blues, from the deceptively titled “Merry Christmas Baby,” a frosty kiss-off sprinkled with bon mots like “You can keep your wandering hands in ice,” to the more downhearted “Merry Christmas (To the One I Used to Know).”
Clarkson has likened When Christmas Comes Around… to an ordinary pop album. But a handful of jolly holiday standards, including a faithful rendition of Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” feel decidedly off-theme alongside original songs that position Clarkson as a jilted wife. (The sole exception is Wham!’s oft-covered “Last Christmas,” which she wisely reinterprets in a jazz milieu.)
Clarkson already released the best Christmas album of the 21st century, so an entire collection of holiday-adjacent originals might have made for a more novel approach, further distinguishing it from its predecessor. The meter-shifting “Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)” cleverly winks toward cancel culture and the so-called “War on Christmas,” while the stripped-down “Christmas Come Early” captures the holidays in the time of Covid: “Candles burning out at both ends/I don’t miss the crowds, just my friends,” Clarkson sings wistfully.
What has made 2013’s Wrapped in Red such an enduring addition to the holiday canon is the strength of the songs that Clarkson co-penned herself, especially the jubilant, doo-wop-inflected “Underneath the Tree” and the whimsical “Winter Dreams (Brandon’s Song).” The original songs here don’t quite live up to the lofty bar she previously set: “Santa, Can’t You Hear Me,” a duet with Ariana Grande, too flagrantly cribs from Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and Clarkson’s heartfelt performance on “Merry Christmas (To the One I Used to Know)” is watered down by the track’s drippy soft-rock arrangement.
Clarkson’s vocals, then, are the album’s chief selling point. She puts her own spin on “Santa Baby,” imbuing it with bawdy confidence rather than the coy infantilism favored by so many other artists who have covered Eartha Kitt’s classic chestnut. And her trademark melodic variations, honed in countless performances on The Kelly Clarkson Show, flaunt her still-impressive range on songs like “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” If When Christmas Comes Around… ages anywhere near as well as her voice (or Wrapped in Red) has, the album’s shortcomings may seem trifling by this time next year.
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