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A Very Special Christmas

Various Artists

Produced by Jimmy Iovine

A&M Records

FIRST, BANDAID, a group of British pop stars led by Bob Geldof, released "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to feed starving people in Ethiopia. Then the barrage of benefit music began.

The world of popular music in the last few years seems to have saturated the market with benefit albums. LiveAid, "Sun City", USA for Africa, FarmAid, "That's What Friends Are For" for AIDS, Hands Across America--what's next? One wonders if others, observing the good publicity and massive record sales of Geldof's aid efforts, are not just using charity for self-promotion.

This month, rock producer Jimmy Iovine has returned to Christmas as the theme for his LP for charity and has put together the benefit album to top all benefit albums. A Very Special Christmas, with profits going to Special Olympics, is a virtual Who's Who of this year's Billboard Pop Charts: Madonna, Bruce, U2, Whitney, Bon Jovi, Run DMC, and many, many more.

In all, there are 15 songs from 15 top stars of four countries. But despite the stars' varying homelands, this LP's charm comes from its being so American, in the full-blown commercial sense. The artists from other countries (Sting and U2, among others) have for the most part been more successful in the US than abroad.

This ultimate commercial sense is reflected additionally in the choice of Christmas songs to record. The songs mostly have more to do with American holiday folklore than with religion. Instead of "Ave Maria" or "O Come All Ye Faithful," the album gives us "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," and "Winter Wonderland". The result is that this very good record is satisfied with being fun rather than beautiful, commercial instead of spiritual.

Like almost any album of 15 songs and more than 45 minutes, A Very Special Christmas could have been improved by eliminating a few tracks. The Pretenders' rendition of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" pales in comparison to their own seasonal tune "2000 Miles" of just a few years ago, because Chrissie Hynde's voice just doesn't work in the slow lounge jazz setting of the song. Likewise, Stevie Nicks gravelly voice will make all but the most diehard fans cringe through her unemotional reading of "Silent Night.

THE REST of the album presents a panoramic history of recent American pop, from the '60s girl group sound to modern synth pop, from Midwestern rock to New York rap. The highlights are plentiful. Alison Moyet's "The Coventry Carol" and Sting's "Gabriel's Message" are the two purely spiritual songs, and they are beautifully austere. Sting sings a capella except for a few drum beats, while Moyet blends her ancient sounding carol with simple synthesizer accompaniment producing a haunting blend of present and past.

The usually sappy "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" is rejuvenated by John Cougar Mellencamp accompanied by lively accordion and fiddle. The tired "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is pepped up into a party tune by the playful vocals of the Pointer Sisters and the powerful pop saxophone of Springsteen sidekick Clarence Clemons. And Run-DMC's new rap, "Christmas In Hollis," (also included on Profile Records' new compilation Christmas Rap) not only provides some decent rapping and scratching, but adds a touch of humor to the LP as well.

And of course, what consumer-oriented American benefit LP would be complete without an overblown, melodramatic ballad. The idea of Whitney Houston singing "Do You Hear What I Hear" is initially promising, a pure pop voice made to sing simple ballads. This production is more like "We Are the World: The Sequel," with choir-like backup vocals and a very similar melody. There's the same slow beginning and spare verses building to an overpowering climax of Whitney, backup singers, and treacly violins all at once.

But the magic of this LP is that even this melodramatic treatment works in the context of the album's Christmas spirit and sense of current pop history. Just as Perry Como's Christmas LPs please our parents, and Phil Spector and Motown Christmas records serve the baby boomers, A Very Special Christmas is meant for us, capturing the true pop sounds and commercial spirit of a today--for a good cause.