John Legend - A Legendary Christmas

The Guardian 0

Its classy backings, star guests and deep cuts avoid tackiness, but Legend should have got out the tinsel and loosened up

The world needs more new Christmas music: it sounds like something only a raving maniac would say, but there’s a grain of truth in it. The pantheon of celebrated Christmas pop songs is a surprisingly small. There have been attempts to expand the canon over the years by including songs that were relative flops on release – Elton John’s Step Into Christmas, left in the dust by Slade and Wizzard back in 1973, or the Waitresses’ Christmas Wrapping, in at 45 with a bullet in 1982 – but you could still fit the lot on one CD. And it’s the absolute apotheosis of music you’re going to hear whether you want to or not. In Britain at least, the only way to avoid repeated exposure to Wonderful Christmastime and Fairytale of New York over December is to adopt a lifestyle of hermetic seclusion with no access to broadcast media and no contact with your fellow man, or to spend the entire month wearing earplugs, drastic approaches both.

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras