Album Review: Destiny's Child - 8 Days of Christmas

A Destiny's Child Christmas album made complete sense. Destiny's Child had become the machine Mathew intended it to be. They were at the height of their popularity. The group could SANG. And it was also a quick and easy way to expand the catalog of the group which featured the line-up of Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle. But the problem with 8 Days of Christmas was that the focus was placed so firmly on keeping the Destiny's Child machine chugging along, that nobody seemed to really care too much about the quality of the music. And so 8 Days of Christmas ended up the way of Survivor. An overlong, inconsistent mess that didn't know what exactly it wanted to be musically.

The only draw with 8 Days of Christmas was that it featured solo songs from Kelly and Michelle. 

8 Days of Christmas is an album of covers of Christmas classics, and a couple of original songs hoping to make it to the holy grail of traditional status. You could call any Christmas album predictable, given that there are only so many things one can do with a Christmas album. But 8 Days of Christmas really is predictable as fuck. The traditional Christmas songs are some of the most well known, and basic choices. You honestly could have guessed 80% of this tracklist. "Silent Night", "Little Drummer Boy", "O Holy Night", "White Christmas". What Black Christmas album DOESN'T feature these songs? The renditions of the traditional Christmas songs range from really nice to chile, switch it off. "Silent Night" sounds more like Silent Hill, and "White Christmas" starts off nice, but then flips into something which thinks it's far hotter than it actually is. It's like listening to somebody's first ever GarageBand Hip-Hop beat.

The three original contributions are a mixed bag. "Winter Paradise" is a cute Christmas song. "8 Days of Christmas" is ratchet nonsense that you would never voluntarily play at home, but would most definitely buss down to at your work Christmas party. "Spread a Little Love on Christmas Day" is a banger, but it's not even remotely a Christmas song, despite the chorus featuring the words 'Christmas Day' sung 8 times.

The best part of this album is getting to hear the solo songs. And what may or may not surprise some, Screamyoncé's "Silent Night" (which she wrote according to the album inlay) is the worst of the three. During this phase of her career Tinnitusyoncé was over-singing absolutely everything. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it gave you earache. Here, it ruined a song that I was already sick to death of. What starts off as a really beautiful and intimate rendition which evokes the mood of the lyrics, turns into Beyoncé showing off unnecessarily and just screaming up and down the song. This rendition of "Silent Night" has no taste.

Michelle Tenitra takes on "O Holy Night", which is no surprise, because we know Tenitra lives for Jesus and "O Holy Night" is gospel as fuck. Tenitra has a good, if inconsistent voice. But "O Holy Night" does a bitch no favours. She sounds as flat and as dry as ryvita. "O Holy Night" is always a risky song to cover, because it is a beloved song amongst Black folk, and there are so many amazing renditions of it. It's also one of those songs that very few, if any, re-arrange or change, purely because the original arrangement is so well known and ubiquitous. It's also a very challenging song to sing, and Tenitra just doesn't have the agility or the control to take it on. It would have made more sense for Tenitra to have covered "Silent Night" and for Beyoncé to have done "O Holy Night" because she has a better suited voice for it, and her tendency to over sing would have worked well for it.

Kelendria's solo is hands-down the best of the three, and the best song on this holly covered piece of doo-doo. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" is another oft covered Christmas song. But the arrangement of this version and how good Kelly sounds singing it is a perfect mix of respecting the original, but adding just enough to make it fit perfectly to her. Kelendria has a really nice voice, with a great clarity which is well suited pop, and it's put front and centre here. She also delivers some richly arranged harmonies in contrast to Michelle and Beyoncé's sparse approaches. Hearing Kelly's vocals stacked and layered makes you realise that many of the vocals on songs that you thought were Beyoncé's are actually hers. It's a shame this wasn't made a single. It's gorgeous, and has an energy and sound to it that should have been carried throughout the album.

8 Days of Christmas is a mess. It suffers in many of the ways that Survivor did, which is that it's too long, the songs aren't that good, it has too many ideas and is just wholly inconsistent. 8 Days of Christmas kinda forgets about Christmas. The focus of this album seldom feels like it's about capturing the spirit of the holidays, and more like an unashamed shot at wracking up a couple of extra songwriting credits for Beyoncé, pushing the Destiny's Child brand, and introducing Solange as an artist - none of which would have been so glaring if the album was actually good. And even worse, the album isn't much of a showcase of Destiny's Child. When Mariah Carey released her Christmas album, even she was sceptical of it. But she wound up releasing a brilliant song which is now considered a traditional Christmas song which charts every single year, and an album which was a brilliant showcase of Mariah's vocals and songwriting talents. 8 Days of Christmas doesn't offer anything that we hadn't gotten from Destiny's Child before, except a case that Kelly should be singing far more on songs than Beyoncé or Mathew let her.

VERDICT: HEAVENLY PEACE PLEASE

Highlights:
■ Winter Wonderland
■ This Christmas
■ Do You Hear What I Hear? 🏆 J's fave
■ Spread a Little Love On Christmas Day