Track Listing

1. Christmas All Over Again
2. Jingle Bell Rock
3. The Christmas Song
4. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
5. The Birth of Christ
6. Please Come Home for Christmas
7. What Christmas Means to Me
8. O Christmas Tree
9. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
10. White Christmas
11. Christmas Is
12. Christmas Time Again
13. Merry Christmas, Baby
14. O Holy Night
15. Sleigh Ride
16. What Child Is This?
17. Blue Christmas
18. Silent Night
19. I Believe in You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29361 in Music
• Released on: 1992-10-20
• Number of discs: 1

Album Details
Second Volume of this Landmark Christmas Collection. Green Cover Art.

Amazon.com
The follow up to the original, this collection in many ways surpasses the initial effort. Duets seem to rule here, with Cyndi Lauper and Frank Sinatra double teaming on "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," while the irrepressible Ronnie Spector shares the mic with Darlene Love for a resplendent "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson give "Blue Christmas" a steamy and sizzling once-over. Vanessa Williams stops the disc, though, with her simple yet stunning rendition of "What Child Is This." The then-sign-of-the-times inclusion, Michael Bolton, offers a forgettable "White Christmas," but it's the only real clunker in the bunch. Always just a tad too country to make it as a cross-over artist, Randy Travis still makes "Jingle Bell Rock" his own in his smooth way. --Steve Gdula

Customer Reviews

Excellent Holiday CD
I received this CD as a gift and put it away. I was asked to bring some music over for a holiday party my friends were giving. I put it one as an after-thought and to my dis-belief people stopped talking and started listening to some of the tracks. There are some great duets in this version and it is well worth having. Now my friends borrow it all the time. The sounds are refrshing and put a new spin on the old holiday songs. I am going to buy the other CD's in the series as well.

Maintaining the standard of the first volume
The first volume of A very special Christmas was incredible, but this follow-up is just as good and even more eclectic. Now, I have wide musical tastes but I can't believe there are too many people who enjoy listening to Randy Travis (singing Jingle bell rock here) and also enjoy the music of Run DMC (rapping Christmas is). Country and rap just do not mix, even though the Bellamy brothers once recorded a song called Country rap - it was a good try but didn't really work. And even if you are in the minority that enjoy both Randy Travis and Run DMC, will you also enjoy Michael Bolton, Debbie Gibson and everything else here? Probably not. In my case, I can tolerate one rap track for the sheer brilliance and diversity of the rest of this collection.

Tom Petty sets the standard with the opening track, Christmas all over again. Darlene Love, one of the stars of the Phil Spector Christmas album, reminds us all how Christmas rock music really began, here to be heard singing a cover of Rocking around the Christmas tree. Bonnie Raitt and Charles Brown bring a touch of the blues to the collection with their rendition of Merry Christmas baby. Santa Claus is coming to town features Cyndi Lauper and Frank Sinatra, though this is not a true duet - Cyndi's vocals were overdubbed on Frank's original recording. Jon Bon Jovi does an excellent cover of the Eagles classic Please come home for Christmas.

There are so many superb songs here, brilliantly performed. It may not be possible to like every track, but if you enjoy most of them (I enjoyed almost all of them), their quality will more than make up for the others.

I want a Rickenbacker guitar
This album is good, but it isn't quite the classic that the first Very Special Christmas is. The highlight is definitely the opening song by Tom Petty. The rest of the album is somewhat uneven. While there are some fine performances by the likes of Sinead O'Conner, Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love, there are also a few lame performances by people like Jon Bon Jovi, Michael Bolton and Extreme. One of the oddities here is a "duet" between Frank Sinatra and Cyndi Lauper. They actually just used an old vocal by Frank from 1947 and added Cyndi's voice to it. In an interesting side note, they originally tried to have Paula Adbul do the duet, but she was unable to hit the right notes. The only artist here that is repeated from the the first Very Special Christmas is Run-D.M.C., but the song they do here is far inferior to the classic "Christmas in Hollis". Overall it's a decent Christmas album, and if you are a fan of the performers featured on it, I would recommend it.