Whitney Houston One Wish: The Holiday Album CD

Personnel: Whitney Houston (vocals); Bobbi Kristina Brown (vocals); Phil Hamilton (acoustic & electric guitars); Paul Jackson, Jr., Dean Parks (guitar); Gerald Tarack, Max Ellen, Regis Iandiorio, Sandra Billingslea, Carol Pool, Kathy Livolsi (violin); Michael Morton (flute); Mervyn Warren (electric piano, keyboards, background vocals); Troy Taylor (keyboards, bass, drums, background vocals); Ron Jenkins, Reggie Hamilton (bass); Scott Frankfurt (drums, programming); Bernard Davis (drums); Bashiri Johnson (percussion); Ezekiel Lewis (background vocals); The Georgia Mass Choir.
Producers include: Troy Taylor, Mervyn Warren, Gordon Chambers.
Whitney Houston delivered One Wish: The Holiday Album, her first Christmas record, a year after her 2002 comeback, Just Whitney. If it seemed like that record played it safe, that's nothing compared to One Wish, which is the straightest adult contemporary record Houston had released in years. Of course, holiday records are the last place anybody would want to take a risk, since they're designed to be nice, pleasant mood music and this suits the bill nicely. The clean, pristine production, heavy on synths, sounds as if it was cut in the late '80s, yet it's also strangely spare, often being no more than a synth and a drum machine. Still, it's a sound that's well suited for Whitney and her thoroughly predictable set of material (the title track is the only new song, then the final two songs are recycled from the soundtrack of The Preacher's Wife). Ultimately, One Wish is the kind of album that may only appeal to a fan of Whitney who has already yearned for her holiday album, but for those fans, it will be satisfactory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Whitney Houston delivered One Wish: The Holiday Album, her first Christmas record, a year after her 2002 comeback, Just Whitney. If it seemed like that record played it safe, that's nothing compared to One Wish, which is the straightest adult contemporary record Houston had released in years. Of course, holiday records are the last place anybody would want to take a risk, since they're designed to be nice, pleasant mood music and, apart from a rather horrid version of "Little Drummer Boy" -- which features her daughter Bobbie Kristina Brown on vocals, but that's not what sinks it: it's Whitney's bewildering scat on "rump-pum-pum" that ruins the cut -- this suits the bill nicely. The clean, pristine production, heavy on synths, sounds as if it was cut in the late '80s, yet it's also strangely spare, often being no more than a synth and a drum machine. Still, it's a sound that's well suited for Whitney and her thoroughly predictable set of material (the title track is the only new song, then the final two songs are recycled from the soundtrack of The Preacher's Wife). Ultimately, One Wish is the kind of album that may only appeal to a fan of Whitney who has already yearned for her holiday album, but for those fans, it will be satisfactory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Whitney Houston's soulful, elastic voice was practically made to wrap around Christmas standards, but despite the naturalness of the match, ONE WISH, out for Christmas 2003, as the singer neared her third decade of performing, marks her first holiday album. What lies within shouldn't disappoint as she covers many familiar tunes with just a sprinkle of recent music, the sweet-as-sugar title track originally by Freddie Jackson.
While Houston's been through her share of publicized drama over the years, her voice betrays no hint of the strife on ONE WISH. She begins in the vein of a female Nat "King" Cole, smoothly crooning "The First Noel" and "The Christmas Song" in a manner shifting between agreeable acrobatics and welcome subtlety. Her daughter Bobby Kristina Brown joins in to provide rum-pa-pa-pum backup on a cute version of "The Little Drummer Boy." The best moments sneak up on the listener when Houston gets lost in the classics, delivering unabashedly sentimental and lovable song