Cher Christmas Review: A Holiday Album We Didn’t Know We Didn’t Need

Stripped of its contemporary signifiers, the album could have been released at any point in the singer’s six-decade career.

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Cher, Christmas
Photo: Warner Records

Stripped of a handful of tracks filled with contemporary signifiers, Cher’s Christmas could have been released at any point in the singer’s nearly six-decade career. Whether it be a faithful rendition of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” featuring the original queen of Christmas, Darlene Love, or the ingratiating original song “Christmas Ain’t Christmas Without You,” the majority of the album’s 13 tracks opt for a traditional holiday approach.

It’s when Cher and frequent collaborator Mark Taylor steer the project toward the long-dated dance-pop of the pair’s late-’90s smash “Believe” that the sleigh goes off the rails. For one, the album’s paint-by-numbers opening track, “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” is marred by a rudimentary hook—“DJ, play a Christmas song/I wanna be dancing all night long”—and gratuitous Auto-Tune and half-step key change. And the similarly pitched “Angels in the Snow” is only marginally more festive thanks to inclusion of some sleigh bells.

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On any other holiday album, the dour “Home,” featuring Michael Bublé, and a vampy-to-the-point-of-campy cover of “Santa Baby” might be the most cringe-inducing offerings. But Christmas’s biggest crime against the holiday spirit is “Drop Top Sleigh Ride,” a trap-adjacent song featuring wan lyrics like “I’m just a jingle bell away” and even more embarrassing yuletide wordplay from rapper Tyga: “Yeah, I make it rain, dear.”

That track and “DJ Play a Christmas Song” are, shockingly, credited to no less than half a dozen songwriters apiece. Christmas’s charming closing track, a cover of the Zombies’s “This Will Be Our Year”—which was written by Chris White and clocks in at just over two minutes—proves that when it comes to holiday cash-ins, less is sometimes more.

Score: 
 Label: Warner  Release Date: October 20, 2023  Buy: Amazon

Alexa Camp

Alexa is a PR specialist, writer, and fashionista.

10 Comments

  1. OMG! You are a moron or at the very least someone who can’t recognize real camp (do you even know what that means?)

    • Okay, #1, it’s Cher – if you’ve somehow been under a rock for the last 7 decades – she’s fully embraced her camp, and is clearly enjoying herself enough to give us a Christmas album in her late 70s.

      #2 – this review feels forced in the sense that the writer had already had their mind made up before they even spun the record. Take another listen while recognizing that you’re looking far too deep into a project that’s clearly just fun and festive. Don’t overthink it! We’re not reinventing the wheel here.

  2. This reviewer obviously has a problem with Cher. If you can’t review this music honestly and without prejudice, then you shouldn’t be the one to put this out. What having many writers to a song have to do with a song being good or bad, I don’t understand. Today’s artist have loads of collaborators on their songs. Forget this ‘reviewer’ and check out for yourself “Drop Top Sleigh Ride, Run Rudolph Run, Angels In The Snow, Home, That’s What Christmas Means To Me, and Put A Little Holiday In Your Heart”, all on YouTube. I’m not a huge Cher fan, but this is one of her more enjoyable releases. The album has 13 songs and except for one remake I didn’t enjoy, I’ve finally found my first holiday album to buy. Decide for yourself instead of listening to someone who’s getting paid to tell you what to like or not like.

  3. you’re out of your mind & not smart. This album is beautifully done & she sounds better than ever! how dare you. I hope you step on a Lego barefoot.

  4. Terrible review. Cher’s album is amazing, I wish you could be able to sing as she does with the energy and dedication to her work.

  5. You know I’m no fan boy but this reviewer has her head firmly tucked and it obviously isn’t anywhere near this album. Cher’s Christmas is pure joy, pure Christmas camp and best of all pure Cher. I got the vinyl today. It is great!

  6. Dear review author: Cher is the only human, on a planet of almost 8.1 Billion, who has had #1 hit on a Billboard chart in every decade in the last seven decades as a solo-artist (your career spanning was off by 10yrs so do your homework). Furthermore, Cher did, in fact, lay down one of these tracks earlier in her career….as a backup singer at age 17 for Darlene Love’s original recording of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) for Phil Spector. Enough said

  7. Wow. This review is so far detached from reality it should not even be considered a review. It’s an amazing album by a true artist. Fun, happy, and feel good. On the flip side this review is pathetic, contrived, and manufactured.

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