Search - Destiny's Child :: 8 Days of Christmas

Not typical of what I listen to but interesting

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 09/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I like many different types of music including pop, rock, country, jazz, folk, classical and R+B. When it comes to R+B, I am mainly interested in the old stuff, particularly of the fifties, sixties and seventies. This album dates from the late nineties and is, of course, recorded in a much more recent style of R+B. With its distinctive funky rhythms much more to the fore than on most Christmas albums, it is certainly different for any of the music that I normally listen to.



The song titles are certainly familiar but have you heard them interpreted anything like this before? 8 days of Christmas (the title track) is a re-working of 12 days of Christmas. I'm guessing that they cut it from 12 to 8 because a full-length version would have been too long given the way that they do it. Opera of the bells is actually their reworking of Carol of the bells. I can't even guess the reason for the title change here, since it certainly doesn't sound very operatic to my ears. My favorite here is probably Silent night, precisely because I've heard so many versions of this well-worn chestnut. I appreciate hearing this very different, but still recognizable, version.



As a change from what I normally listen to, this is great. Nevertheless, it won't cause me to get excited about contemporary R+B on a large scale. Still, I may dabble in it occasionally as I did with this. If you are one of those people who buy music based on what I like, I strongly recommend that you hear samples before committing yourself.

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