Music Review: Joy - A Holiday Collection by Jewel

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Fun folk/pop arrangements for Christmas

Cons: The Medley on several levels

The Bottom Line:

Finds the line between

Familiar and different

With a great result

Snuggle Up By the Fire with Jewel

While I stick mostly to Christian music, I do occasionally hear bits of music by non-Christian artists. My roommate first introduced me to Jewel, and during the late 90's, I was a big fan of a couple of her songs. Since I will buy Christmas releases from anyone breathing (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly), I picked up Joy: A Holiday Collection, her holiday project, a few years after it was released. And it immediately earned a spot in my heavy rotation pile during December.

The CD splits almost exactly in half. On the first half of the disc, Jewel presents a fairly traditional helping of Christmas songs served in a traditional manner. Yet she maintains her folk/pop style through the entire thing.

The CD starts off with "Joy to the World." The opening notes feature a choir, something you don't often hear as back up these days. Yet the choir appears throughout the disc to great effect. Jewel gives this song a mid-tempo arrangement with an emphasis on guitar and lute.

But if you are looking for beautiful, the second track is for you. Jewel's strong voice makes "O Holy Night" breathtaking. Her voice signs over a quiet, picked guitar that makes up most of the background music. Listening to this track, you can almost picture the first Christmas.

The most upbeat track in the first half is "Winter Wonderland." It's still only mid-tempo, but it fits the songs perfectly. A children's choir joins Jewel for this song. It features a bridge of Jewel singing gibberish part way through, something she does several times on the CD. It's weird, but I like it. Even better, she sings the less familiar verses of this song. I have very few copies with all the words.

If the first half is the traditional Christmas half, the second half is where Jewel experiments a little, offers some new songs, and just plain has fun.

This half kicks off with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." This song is a duet with her mother, Nedra Carroll. They are only accompanied by a kids choir and the occasional bells. It's got beautiful harmonies. They go through the song twice, the first time singing, and the second time adding gibberish at random intervals. Yes, it's weird, but I like it.

She and her mother do another basically a cappella duet with "I Wonder as I Wander." Again, it's very pretty. But here's the part I don't get. They do the first verse four times. Since there are four traditional verses to the song, I'm surprised they didn't go those four verses or just do the first verse once.

Jewel wrote three original songs for this disc. The first is "Face of Love," which again features her mother. It's a song about the change in a life because of God's love as expressed at Christmas. It's a beautiful mid-tempo pop track.

The second original song shows up during the medley, which is weird all by itself. It starts off with a Southern Gospel version of "Go Tell it on the Mountain," which is lots of fun. Then it transitions into the chorus of Julie Gold's "From a Distance" before going into Jewel's "Life Uncommon." So what's so weird about it? First, there's a huge tempo switch from "Go Tell is on the Mountain" to the other two songs. Then there's my personal theological issue with "From a Distance." What the heck is that song doing on a Christmas CD? The entire point of Christmas is that God became man, you know, got highly involved in our lives. Kinda the opposite of the theme of that song in fact. Now don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that someone can't believe that. It just seems weird to me to put that thought on a Christmas project.

Okay, deep breath. Rant over.

"Gloria" actually threw me off when I first got the CD. It's a song written completely in Latin and sounds like something that would be done in a classical music recital this time of year. Yet this is another song that Jewel wrote. She sings it as a duet with herself, and it is beautiful.

Finally, the disc ends with a Christmas version of "Hands." I like the song so was happy to get a copy of it. But I'm not nearly familiar enough with the song to be able to tell what makes it a Christmas song. I think the only real tweak is adding the choir, but I don't know the original well enough to know for sure.

There are many reasons I look forward to pulling out my Christmas music each December, and this is one of them. Jewel's Joy: A Holiday Collection will be the perfect addition to any Christmas music collection.

CD Length: 44:31

Tracks:

1. Joy to the World

2. O Holy Night

3. Silent Night

4. Winter Wonderland

5. O Little Town of Bethlehem

6. Ave Maria

7. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

8. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

9. Face of Love

10. Medley: Go Tell it on the Mountain, Life Uncommon, From a Distance

11. I Wonder as I Wander

12. Gloria

13. Hands (Christmas Version)