“I’ve been such a good girl,” Alicia Keys assures Santa on the first song on her first festive collection. Certainly, for the 41-year-old to get this far into her career without cashing in with a Christmas album is a sign of exceptional classiness. And as Christmas content goes, it doesn’t come much classier than listening to her emoting in Latin on a closing version of Schubert’s Ave Maria.
In practical terms, this is Keys’ first album since her major label deal concluded and she went independent, so she may well have been looking for a bankable set of songs. However, so far it’s her first release to fail to hit the US or UK charts. The fact that it’s only streaming on Apple Music hasn’t helped its visibility, but it’s certainly the best of a buffet of 2022 Christmas albums that also includes releases from Backstreet Boys, two Andreas – Corr and Bocelli – and, naturally, Cliff Richard.
Keys does mostly interesting things to seven songs that everyone knows already and adds four of her own – not strictly new ones. Old Memories on Christmas is a piano soul number identical to her song Old Memories from her 2021 album, Keys, but with references to snow and carols added to the lyrics. Not Even the King doesn’t mention Christmas at all, but presumably its message about it being possible to feel rich even without money can pass as a dig at seasonal commercialism during the cost of living crisis. It’s an Emeli Sandé co-write resurrected from her 2012 album Girl on Fire.
Then there’s You Don’t Have to be Alone, a piano ballad with a cosy fireside feel, and December Back 2 June, a livelier novelty that wouldn’t feel out of place on the Jackson 5 Christmas Album. Among the old favourites, her merry and bright piano line somehow makes Nat King Cole’s old chestnut, The Christmas Song, feel slightly fresher than usual. The only instance of oversinging comes on Happy Xmas (War is Over), generally one of the more understated Christmas tunes, on which she makes her way towards a painful falsetto.
But there’s a relaxed, jazzy soulfulness to songs such as Christmas Time is Here, from the Charlie Brown cartoon, and Please Come Home for Christmas, by the three-dimensional Charles Brown, that allows the whole thing to drift past pleasantly. It’s an overstuffed market, but this one has more sparkle than most.
