I read about this CD today and bought it with great expectations.
It sucks.
Well, no it doesn't suck, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Miss M can really sing but this performance was just ho-hum. Part of the problem is that for a female crooner who admires Rosemary Clooney she falls short in comparison to her idol whose voice is so identified with the season. Clooney's last Christmas album, "White Christmas"has the best renditions (that I've heard, anyway) of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (my favorite) and White Christmas that everything else pales next to it. Including Bette's version of "Have Yourself" and "White Christmas." Her rendition of I'll Be Home for Christmas is nice and on first hearing my favorite on the CD. Her remake of From a Distance, a song I first heard in 1990 as we prepared for the first Gulf War into a Christmas "version" didn't do anything to enhance the song. The original recording is superior.
I love Bette. Like Madonna, she is a gay icon. Unlike Madonna, she can sing. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "she can suck melancholy out of a song as weasel sucks eggs." Unfortunately she fails to do that here and has put just another bland Christmas album on the market.
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