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Saints!

Friday
March 29th, 2024

lea michele christmas in the city spotlight pageLea Michele in a scene from her “Christmas in New York” video from her recently released “Christmas in the City” album. Courtesy photoELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

 

The Christmas season is upon the world now and that means an (almost) onslaught of Christmas music being blasted in local stores and out of cars driving in traffic. Like many people, I’ve been searching for some Christmas music to listen to in order to help get in the holiday spirit and recently, I came across Lea Michele’s new Christmas album “Christmas in the City” on YouTube. Having been a fan of hers during her time on “Glee,” I knew I’d probably be in for a good time jamming out to her renditions of some of my favorite Christmas songs. 

But ultimately, my expectations ended up being blown completely out of the water – in a good way, of course. 

First off, a ton of praise has to be given to Michele’s vocals because they are absolutely outstanding. She has a great, clear soprano tone and she can also belt it with the best of them – sometimes within the same song on this album. I also love how she doesn’t strain herself or try too hard to reach the notes in the songs and lets her natural abilities shine through. Overall, her voice is perfect for all the Christmas songs featured on this CD and she sounds great on every single song, making it an overall very enjoyable album to listen to for this Christmas season. I would say my favorite vocal moment from Michele comes at the end of “O Holy Night” because the high notes she reaches sound absolutely beautiful, so much so that I almost cried just because of that song’s ending. I also really enjoyed her duet with Cynthia Erivo on “Angels We Have Heard On High,” their voices harmonized so well together and it just sounded absolutely amazing. And since that’s one of my overall favorite Christmas songs, I was very happy to hear such a great rendition of it. 

Along with the vocals, I also really enjoyed the song list on the album, and the fun starts right away with the opener “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and continues with other favorites “Silent Night” and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and her original song “Christmas in New York.” The track list is just overall very fun and when you see those familiar titles, you just automatically think of Christmas and they will all put listeners in a great mood and ready for Christmas in a few weeks. Overall, I would say my favorite song on this album was “Christmas in New York” because it’s just such a fun song and has so many elements, particularly the pop and Broadway influences. It’s just such a fun song to listen to and actually somewhat reminded me of Lin-Manuel’s song “Cheering for Me Now” that he released with his Hamildrops playlist (more detail on that can be found on Google and on YouTube if you’re so inclined to do some searching). Admittedly, however, I was slightly confused about the inclusion of “Do You Want to Build A Snowman?” from “Frozen.” Michele’s rendition of the song was actually lovely, but it was the only song on the album where I couldn’t help but think “And that was on there why, precisely?”

I also really enjoyed the instrumentals that went with the songs on this album. I was in band from 5th grade all the way through my first year of college, so I always appreciate hearing good instrumental stuff, and I enjoyed what they did with the instrumentals on this album because they sounded great. I also loved how the instrumental parts complemented Michele’s vocals and how everything was so well balanced – it seems (to me) a lot of times, the instrumental parts tend to overshadow the vocals on songs, and that’s something that always somewhat irritates me because all parts of a song should complement each other and there shouldn’t be one part trying to outshine everything else. And much like the vocals, the instrumental parts were also very fun to listen to and I loved how they were played. 

I also really enjoyed all of the collaborations that went into this album, there are several songs that feature special guests (including fellow “Glee” alumni Darren Criss and Jonathan Groff). All of the duets were also very fun to listen to and I enjoyed them very much. Along with her duet with Erivo, my other favorite duet on the album was “White Christmas” with Darren Criss, their voices just sounded absolutely wonderful together and it was so awesome to listen to. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed this album and it was a great listen, and I would give it a solid “A” grade. The vocals are fantastic from everyone on this album, the instrumental parts are absolutely lovely and complement the songs, and it’s an overall fun Christmas album to listen to. If you’re looking for some good Christmas music and/or are a fan of “Glee,” you will enjoy listening to “Christmas in the City.”