Home For Christmas, Sheryl Crow (Hallmark)

Sheryl's been to the holiday well before with a few tunes in the Very Special Christmas series, but this full album is all new, though she revisits "Blue Christmas" here in a bluesier version than the Very Special performance and does a studio version of "Merry Christmas Baby" as opposed to the live performance she shared with Eric Clapton. As this endeavor was commissioned by Hallmark for 2008, it stands to reason that this is going to be something that regular Hallmark store customers would be comfortable with, but Crow manages to avoid going too middle of the road here, falling back on blues and soul readymades in a lot of cases, even recasting "O Holy Night" as an R'nB showstopper. "Go Tell It On the Mountain" gets the requisite gospel treatment, though "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "There Is a Star That Shines Tonight" are definitely for the Hallmark crowd. After you bring a copy of this home, you can download "Hello My Friend Hello," which may or may not be a Sheryl original but is another mellow Christmas ballad. I would have preferred a little more like her version of "Run Rudolph Run" from VSC, but I understand why that wasn't likely. UPDATE: This album is back in the racks for 2010 at Target with a different cover, and "Hello My Friend Hello" is promoted to the new disc's track listing.