Why the Music Biz—and Cher—Wants to Start Christmas in October

Earlier this month, Cher and her beloved vocoder sang “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” giving us a house-friendly introduction to the music icon’s first-ever holiday album, Christmas. “I had no intention of doing a Christmas album,” Cher casually admitted to Billboard in a recent interview. “But [Warner Records] said, ‘Why don’t you do a Christmas album, Cher?’ and I said if I can do my version, I’ll do it, and they were very pleasant.”

Christmas, which arrived last Friday, is indeed very pleasant. The album plays like an episode of Cher’s ’70s variety show, as she performs familiar songs with professional commitment, made more fun by the hint that she can’t take anything too seriously. (Watch her memorable 1975 duet with David Bowie and you’ll see what I mean.) She sounds equally invested in standards as strong as “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and Stevie Wonder’s “What Christmas Means to Me” as she does on the sappy Hallmark-card-set-to-music “This Will Be Our Year” or the hip-hop-inflected, Tyga-featuring “Drop Top Sleigh Ride.”

Really, though, Christmas is as much about Cher as it is about Christmas; that much is clear in a trailer for the album that’s packed with footage from throughout her prolific, decades-long career. Her fame is the album’s subtext, just as it was for holiday releases from Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, and the Backstreet Boys.

Read more at The Daily Beast.