Home For Christmas, N'Sync (RCA)

It's easy to dismiss anything coming from a group whose average fan is a 12-year-old girl, especially one as visible as N'Sync. But quality standards for teen idols have gone up over the years, and the group delivers a solid, though unremarkable, Christmas compilation. This 1998 album is a typical effort by a popular group: a handful of standards ("The Christmas Song," "The First Noel" and an a cappella "O Holy Night") combined with originals typical of the group's non-holiday output. There's also the obligatory New Year's concluding tune, "Kiss Me at Midnight." The group operates in the modern R&B idiom, and like other such groups they fall back into soft jazz when doing slow-tempo tunes. Performances are solid, but the original songs just aren't that memorable. Consumer note: Six songs from this album were recycled on the group's The Winter Album, which also included six non-holiday songs on first release; subsequent issues dropped some of the non-holiday tunes.