A Holiday I Do

The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band…

For Tony Award-winning performer Idina Menzel, the holidays haven’t always come without complexities. “My parents announced that they were separating on Thanksgiving morning,” she tells Apple Music. When Menzel gave birth to her son and got remarried, these moments granted her the opportunity to rewrite her version of the holidays. Billy Porter, Josh Gad, Ariana Grande, and husband Aaron Lohr help her usher in the season with a medley of rejuvenated favorites and spirited originals. “I wanted it to feel like you could be at a great holiday party back in the ’40s or ’50s,” Menzel says. “I also want you to be able to decorate your tree, put on the music, and feel excited for the holidays.” Here, Menzel talks through some of Christmas: A Season of Love’s most festive moments.

While it can't hope to compete with the impressive box sets of her work or even more specialized single-disc collections, 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Billie Holiday still manages to present a fair amount of her most definitive work from the '40s, even though it's only 12 tracks long. "Strange Fruit," "Lover Man," "Lady Sings the Blues," and "My Man" are all here, along with "Fine and Mellow," "'Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do," and "I Loves You Porgy." Not surprisingly since its track listing is so small, this collection is somewhat unfocused and definitely incomplete, but it offers a tantalizing taste of Billie Holiday's most musically fruitful period.

Billie Holiday is heard at her absolute best on this attractive two-CD set. During her period on Decca, Lady Day was accompanied by strings (for the first time), large studio orchestras, and even background vocalists, so jazz solos from her sidemen are few. But her voice was at its strongest during the 1940s (even with her personal problems) and to hear all 50 of her Decca performances (including alternate takes and even some studio chatter) is a real joy. Among the high points of this essential set are her original versions of "Lover Man" (Holiday's biggest selling record), "Don't Explain," "Good Morning Heartache," "'Tain't Nobody's Business if I Do," "Now or Never," "Crazy He Calls Me," and remakes of "Them There Eyes" and "God Bless the Child."