Search - Various Artists :: Billboard Xmas Greatest Hits

The most diverse Christmas music collection you will find

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 12/26/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"How could Billboard reduce all the Christmas music made by popular artists down to ten songs on a single disc? Well, they couldn't and so they didn't. This is a four disc collection and if you look at the play list and see it begins with Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and ends with Cheech & Chong's "Santa Claus and His Old Lady," you can decide right then and there whether you holiday spirit is big enough to encompass those diverse ends of the musical spectrum. You do not have to remember that Gene Autry did the original "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" to enjoy it or any of the older tracks, especially Nat King Cole doing "The Christmas Song" (my personal favorite). Meanwhile, those who like to laugh like Santa during the Christmas season can enjoy "novelty" classics from Spike Jones' "All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)" to Weird Al Yankovic's "Christmas at Ground Zero." I have to think that if you start ticking off the songs from these albums that you would be adding to your music collection you are going to need to use your toes as well as your fingers. I mean, you get everyone from the Chipmunks to Elvis, all laid out pretty much chronologically, which will explain why a lot of people might give up on this set by the time they get to that fourth disc. Yes, there will probably be just as many songs that you can do without, but this is why CD players are programmable. But most of you are going to come out ahead on this one."