Feel-good carols, pop charmers spread holiday cheer

Olivia Newton John (left) and John Farnham

There are a string of carols and pop charmers in the market—and in cyberspace—that’ll help make your holiday season more fun and festive: In their holiday-themed 2012 recording reunion, “This Christmas,” Olivia Newton John and John Travolta “came home swinging from the chandelier,” but that merry musical reunion quickly overstayed its welcome, because its songs weren’t as satisfying as we thought they’d be.

But, “Friends for Christmas,” the singer-actress’ chart-topping album with former teen pop idol-turned-Little River Band vocalist John Farnham (“You’re the Voice”) is a pleasant surprise. While their singing styles and performing temperament seem disparate, they’re indubitably more musically in sync—and the only proof you need to corroborate this are the duo’s reimagined versions of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and “Let It Snow.”

If the album is notable for its cozy familiarity, harmony-making enthusiasm  and lived-in warmth, those are perhaps due to the 68-year-old actress and her 67-year-old pal insisting on recording the songs together and side by side. As a result, the music they create doesn’t sound manufactured, and the string of counterpointed melodies are organically achieved.

Newton John’s singing, with its noticeably wide-gapped vibrato occasionally distracting, isn’t as pristine as it used to be, but she can still reach the high notes and sustain them with confidence. On the other hand, Farnham may look like he’s truly in his ’60s, but his voice is as clear (and strong) as the first time we heard him scale the complex notes of “You’re the Voice.”

Susan Boyle

 Susan Boyle

For its part, the recording “A Wonderful World” may be Susan Boyle’s lowest-charting album on the Billboard 200 chart (it peaked at No. 150, while 2014’s “Hope” debuted at No. 16), but it is also ironically one of the performer’s most accomplished collections.

The 10-track compilation, her seventh, cleverly utilizes the 55-year-old songstress’ celestial pipes in tunes that suit her singing style. The lineup astutely uses her stratospheric trills in arrangements that make her sound nothing less than angelic, especially in her covers of Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre,” the Disney classic “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Abba’s poignant “I Have a Dream,” Robbie Williams’ “Angels,” and Boyle’s understated but exquisitely sung version of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

Yes, the album still feels “safe,” but there are numbers that demonstrate the songstress’ willingness to “stretch and diversify”: She sings a duet with a “digitized” Nat King Cole, who died in 1965 at age 45, in Victor Young and Edward Heyman’s “When I Fall in Love,” and with the steel-voiced Michael Bolton in “Somewhere Out There,” which was first popularized by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram in 1986.

If these don’t impress you, jump to the album’s ninth cut, and you’ll hear Boyle singing Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” like an ethereal church hymn—and, the good news is, she doesn’t disappoint!