When Christina Aguilera released her album, My Kind Of Christmas, in 2000, I felt compelled to buy it. I wouldn’t call myself a Christina Aguilera fan, but I do like her, and I’m sucker for holiday albums, so this sounded like a treat.
The disc opens with Christmas Time, an original song. I happen to like it. It’s a catchy, upbeat, pop song, all about the Christmas season. Aguilera raps towards the end, which isn’t as frightening as it sounds.
This Year is another original song. This one is more R&B flavoured I like this one, too. Aguilera sings about spending the holidays with her sweetheart, and in typical X-Tina fashion, tells him: “You’ll be my spring ahead, my fall behind/The shimmy on my hips, oh when I bump and grind”.
I love when artists put their own spin on my favorite Christmas songs. Unless it turns out horrible. Fortunately, that’s not the case with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Aguilera starts off singing very softly, and her voice is smooth, and very pleasant. She continues on, and around 2:35, hits an nice high note, which is the highlight of the song.
Angels We Have Heard On High starts off with Aguilera and a gospel choir singing, “Glo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ria”, and then they go into the song. The gospel choir is a nice touch to this classic, and Aguilera’s vocals are nice. This isn’t one of my favorites, but I like it.
Aguilera tricks us into thinking that she’s going to sing “Auld Lang Syne” at the beginning of Merry Christmas, Baby. Every review that I’ve read about this album points out the over-singing done by Aguilera in the beginning of this song. She drags out four lines of Auld Lang Syne for a whole minute which is not necessary. She seems to annunciate each syllable, and it’s just horrible. At this point, I’m sure that everyone has established that Aguilera is a talented singer, so it’s just not necessary for her to do all this riffing. Anyway, the actual song isn’t one of the best tracks on the album. It has this whole jazz feel to it, but mostly reminds me of a lounge act (probably thanks to Dr. John, who plays piano and adds his vocals to the track). At the end, Aguilera does a couple of “Ooooooh yeaaaaaahs!” for a few more minutes, just to further agitate me, I’m sure.
Oh Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song. Before listening to it for the first time, I was thinking, Please do this song justice, Christina. Do not ruin my favorite Christmas song. While she didn’t ruin it, I can’t say her version is my favorite (for the record, *NSYNC’s acappella version of Oh Holy Night holds that title). She doesn’t over-sing here as much as she did in the previous track, but she does over do it just a tad bit. After about two minutes, Aguilera starts reciting The Lord’s Prayer, which is kinda awkward in the middle of the song, but nice, I guess. The song gets more gospel as the LA Mass Choir joins in towards the end. Aguilera does her typical riffing until the music fades out.
These Are The Special Times has nothing to do with Christmas. I hate that. Almost every Holiday/Christmas album has at least one love song on it that has nothing at all to do with Christmas. It just annoys me. This song sounds like it would’ve been on Aguilera’s debut album. Anyway, this is just an average love ballad. Nothing really special goes on here.
This Christmas that was made popular by The Temptations appears next. Aguilera’s remake isn’t half bad, actually. She doesn’t add much to it to make it her own, so I suppose it’s the song I like, and not so much her version, but it’s cool that she put it on her album, anyway.
I believe The Christmas Song was the only single off the album. The video is also included as an Enhanced CD extra. Aguilera sticks to the traditional rendition, but the vocal arrangement is different, which makes the song more interesting. Out of the classic Christmas songs on the album, I have to say this is one of my favorites. A lot of reviewers hated Xtina’s Xmas, but personally, I just think it was pointless. It’s basically just 1 minutes and 30 seconds of Aguilera screaming “It’s Christmas time!” over some background music.
The album ends with another waste of space, a remix of The Christmas Song. This track is identical to track 9, except Thunderpuss has remixed it, and turned it into some sort of club mix. I guess this song could be played at a Christmas party, or something, but I was a bit disappointed.
My Kind Of Christmas is a pretty decent holiday album. It’s got some holiday classics, and a few original songs, which aren’t bad. The only things I can say I didn’t like about the album are the length (only 11 tracks- including an interlude and a remix), and Aguilera’s annoying over-singing in some tracks.
Rating: 
Track List
1. Christmas Time
2. This Year
3. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
4. Angels We Have Heard on High
5. Baby Merry Christmas
6. O Holy Night
7. These Are the Special Times
8. This Christmas
9. Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
10. Xtina’s Xmas [Interlude]
11. The Christmas Song [Holiday Remix]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy9ttAwDonc]
*This is a brittpinkie “classic” review. I have edited this review for content and formatting, though retained my original opinion of the product.