A Rosie Christmas Audio CD

All profits from A ROSIE CHRISTMAS are donated to The For All Kids Foundation.

Actually, this collection of holiday duets is more like "A Very Middlebrow Christmas," but since talk show diva O'Donnell can actually sing (in an endearingly New Yawkish way), and since the the proceeds all go to her For All Kids charity foundation, why be churlish? Actually, this high-gloss album has genuine moments of wit and more soul than you'd expect. The influence of ultimate Christmas album auteur Phil Spector hovers around several songs, particularly the contributions by Celine Dion and Trisha Yearwood. Cher--who actually sang backup on the original Spector Christmas LP, remakes that album's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" as a percolating late-'90s dance track (Rosie's answering vocal comes complete with the vocoder gimmick from "Believe"). Elsewhere, Billy Joel contributes a straight big-band version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," Sesame Street's Elmo guests on an amusing "Do You Hear What I Hear," and Lauryn Hill perpetrates a radical deconstruction of "Little Drummer Boy."