When I first sat down to listen to “Under the Mistletoe,” Justin Bieber’s newly released and highly anticipated Christmas album, I successfully made it through approximately 20 seconds of the album before I had to turn it off. I will admit, I’m not a Justin Beiber fan. I do not have “Beiber fever,” but I have occasionally listened to his songs and musically he’s fairly talented. He’s just not my cup of tea. However, he seems to have stolen the hearts of girls across the nation so I figured I’d give his Christmas album a shot.
After finally settling down, and listening to the album through a few times, my opinion of Bieber has not changed. I am actually less excited for Christmas than I originally was prior to listening to “Under the Mistletoe.” My favorite song was the cover of “All I Want for Christmas is You.” He sang maybe a third of it and the rest was all Mariah Carey. Every classic holiday cover he sang did not need all the extra production bells and whistles he tried to incorporate. They are already classics. They don’t need much work. And although I feel credit is due, since he did compose and record some original holiday numbers, each and every one of them sounded like one of the cheesy soundtrack numbers that come out every year for the romantic holiday movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love those movies and their partnering soundtracks but I feel they have their place and my car stereo is not one of them.
Unless you’ve already caught the “fever” I would not recommend adding this album to your collection. If it’s a holiday album you’re looking for I’m pretty sure you’d be much happier with any of the other hundred holiday releases that are sure to storm Christmas aisles all over.