Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 09/01/2011 at 10:36 AM News

The Popdust Files: christmas, justin bieber

Today’s sentence that would have been written eventually: Justin Bieber is releasing a Christmas album. Aww! A way to bring the Mannheim Steamroller to a halt thanks to the intonations of the Bieb, lending somewhat lower-pitched breathiness to all the season’s standards. Except not; it’s all originals.

Now then. Original Christmas songs aren’t always bad. Even if you discard the “everything was original once!” argument, it’s about quality. For every entry into the canon like “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (now extra festive!) there’s a song so unmemorable it doesn’t even make a good counterexample. (OK, fine. 98 Degrees’ Christmas album, which exists.) Let’s stop to think of what could have been, too. How many ill-advised jokes, this one included, would happen if he recorded, say, “What Child Is This?” He already covered a Drake song with the lyric “I don’t trust these women,” and there was that iffy VMAs pun, so who’s to say he wouldn’t go against Scooter Braun’s probable vehement objections and cover the official creepiest Christmas song ever, “Baby It’s Cold Outside”? Instead, we get what’s practically a new Justin Bieber album. A lot of you will think that’s good news.