I love a good funk album, and it should be no surprise that James Brown, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, delivers. But we're looking for a Christmas album here, and this might be the least-Christmas-y Christmas album I've ever heard.
We need a new term for this. I'm going to make one up. You ready? Because I'm going to use this for the rest of my life, especially on this blog. Here you go: A Soulful Christmas is a CILO album (pronounced like "silo" and not like the rapist Voice coach). CILO: "Christmas in Lyrics Only." For example, "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" is technically a Christmas song because the lyrics speak about the jolly man in red, but in terms of the actual music, it features none of the hallmarks of a typical "Christmas song." It's just a regular ol' funk song that one might hear in February, or June, or September.
I guess it's not completely devoid of anything that could be construed as "Christmas." "Let's Unite the Whole World at Christmas" features church bells that could fall into that category. One of the instrumentals briefly features a couple bars of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on marimba. And... well, no, that's about it. Would it have killed someone to play the jingle bells at some point? Well, it might have killed their wallet. James Brown was notorious for fining member of his backing band for messing up during performances. I can't imagine how many fines might be accrued while playing the untamable jingle bells.
If you need proof that this is a CILO album, then look no further than the presence of James Brown's famous "Say It Loud—I'm Black and I'm Proud." This would become the title track of his next album, as well as a rallying cry for civil rights leaders, and yet here it is, for the very first time, on a goddamn Christmas album. I'd call it an outlier if the rest of A Soulful Christmas managed to capture any sounds of the holiday. As it stands, "Say It Loud" fits right in by having nothing to do with Christmas.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment