By Eliza Laden Mauro

The holiday season is rolling right around. With only a week left of school before holiday break, artists are putting out new albums and very merry Christmas tunes. One of the most anticipated albums was Kelly Clarkson’s, “Wrapped in Red,” her first Holiday album.

Clarkson’s music has been very popular since 2002, after she won the first season of American Idol. As a huge fan of Kelly Clarkson’s music, and as the #1 Christmas music supporter, I took it upon myself to ask for the C.D. as a Hannukah present (yes, I know it’s ironic that I’m Jewish and love Christmas music, but who doesn’t?). My sister bought it for me, and I put it on my iPod the first moment I could.

One of my favorite parts of the album is that there are more original tracks on the song list than I’m used to seeing on a Christmas album. Though she has the usual “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, “Silent Night”, and “I’ll be Home For Christmas”, she adds her own flavor of belting out the lyrics in her special voice, and puts her own spin to the tracks. She also partners with some of my favorite country singers, Reba and Ronnie Dunn, continuing on with her recent transition into the country side of music.

The title track, “Wrapped in Red” shows the ambition behind Clarkson’s album. Even in the lyrics, she puts herself out there, “This christmas/ I’m going to risk it all/ This christmas/ I’m not afraid to fall.” Even though it starts the album out on a strong point, it sets high expectations that might not have been met with the rest of the songs.

“Every Christmas” brought me back to her early 2000’s classics, with more of a jazz feel, but then ties in to her new-found strong voice, definitely a holiday classic I’d be looking out for. Other originals, such as, “4 Carats”, and “Underneath the Tree”,  show the more racy, pop side of Clarkson’s music. But “Underneath the Tree” seemed very forced and too fast for her voice to make it any good. She tries to make it memorable and catchy, and possibly into another, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” with no avail. It gets to be really annoying, even though in the end she tries to catch up.

Both colors of Christmas seemed very plain and dull. I understand that it’s very hard to spin the classics into your own creations, but they just seemed very “eh”. They weren’t really anything I would listen to again. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, “Blue Christmas” and “White Christmas” are the two colors.)

However, my three personal favorites are the classics, “Please Come Home For Christmas (Bells Will Be Ringing)”, “Run Run Rudolph”, and original “Winter Dreams (Brandon’s Song)”. Now, it might be because I have this crazy love for the slow rhythmic songs that just make you want to bob your head to the rhythm, but the original “Please Come Home For Christmas” just sounds perfect in Clarkson’s voice. And “Run Run Rudolph” is like this absurd, fast swing song, with lots of trumpets and Clarkson yelling out the lyrics. It makes me just do the “imitate banging on the drums” thing, where you just want to shake your head, and dance around. My last favorite, “Winter Dreams,” is a bubbly song about her husband, that’s so catchy it’s sure to be playing on the radio soon.

Even though some of the songs were a little bit of a letdown, for the most part the album had songs that I’ll probably keep on my iPod until the end of May.