“The mistletoe can pull us closer.?It sorta feels like it’s Valentine’s,” he sings in “Christmas Eve,” a seductive lothario’s anthem co-written with Chris Brown. “I should be playing in the winter snow/But I’mma be under the mistletoe/Shorty, with you,” he warbles in the quasi-reggae-styled title track, already a hit single. It’s really a concept album, then, this is - not just in the way that every Christmas record is a concept album, but a collection of songs specifically themed around an “obligate hemi-parasitic plant” (thanks for that, Wikipedia). But the title of the album is “Under the Mistletoe,” and Bieber manages to make mention of it in almost every track on the album. This may be the first adaptation of “Little Drummer Boy” to include a mention of mistletoe, a plant not previously mentioned in any extra-biblical accounts of the gift of the Magi. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear this in the Bible/I’m so tight, I might go psycho/Christmas time so here’s a recital/I’m so bad like Michael.” (Michael Jackson as honorary Christ child?)īut Rhymes gets the prize for best couplet in “Drummer Boy,” as the veteran rapper actually manages to rhyme “all our Twitter followers” with “happy Hanukkah.” Now, that’s Christmas chutzpah. “I only spit heat ‘cause I’m playin’ for the son,” Bieber raps, in one of the album’s stranger juxtapositions of the sacred and secular. To most non-fans, it’ll sound like coal squared, but this “Drummer Boy” is so brash in its dumbness that it’s kind of likable. Bieber also plays (yes) drums on the cut. He should have kept the first version and turned her down the end result sounds like Bieber singing along with Carey karaoke.Ĭertain to be the most polarizing track: “Drummer Boy,” where both Bieber and Busta Rhymes add topical, lickety-split rap verses to the familiar tale of Jesus’ own percussionist. Bieber cut the song in a lower range, but then Carey heard it and suggested that they should do it as a duet, provided that he bring it back up to her original key. But it seems more appropriate to say that he guests on her recording. Mariah Carey guests on a re-do of her own “All I Want for Christmas” (the ‘90s smash that history may record as the final original Christmas song ever to become a standard). His mentor, Usher, helps roast the chestnuts on the world’s 15-millionth unnecessary reprise of Mel Torme’s “Christmas Song.” Boyz II Men - speaking of boys becoming men - collectively help out on an original, “Fa La La,” singing that they “wanna be your biggest gift.” It sounds like an outtake from “The Chipmunks’ Christmas Album.”īut he’s no cheerful, squeaky-voiced rodent on the newly minted tracks, even if it’s a bit premature to certify the 17-year-old cougar-chaser (sorry, Selena) as a full-fledged soul man.Ī who’s who of R&B guest stars (and one country star) offer a holiday assist. Or, to put it another way, “vocally, his balls have dropped,” as his manager Scooter Braun was quoted as saying this past week, accurately, if indelicately.įor comparison’s sake, proceed directly to the vintage track that closes the album’s deluxe edition, a cover of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday at Christmas” that appears to feature the same vocal Bieber put up on YouTube back in 2007. But from the first not-so-stratospheric notes of “Only Thing I Ever Get for Christmas,” it’s clear Bieber has been through the non-menopausal version of The Change. The kid is still capable of sounding like he’s singing in his falsetto range even when he isn’t. Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber performs during his "My World Tour" concert in Caracas October 19, 2011.
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