Perfect Christmas (2000) – S Club 7

The classic picturesque Winter Wonderland—one-horse sleigh, bells jingling, special someone, freshly-roasted chestnuts, ice-skating rink straight out of Serendipity—finds a modern-day soundtrack. Although an easy target of criticism, given that S Club 7 was sired by Spice Girls/American Idol magnate Simon Fuller, “Perfect Christmas” proves to be holiday pop at its peak: sweet enough to indulge in pleasurably, yet temperate enough with the sappy sentiment that grimaces do not abound. Radio-friendly R&B-lite vocals and a classic Motown-esque melody mosey into a rising and falling chorus that leaps to its spires, then retreats a few steps, gradually climbing in progressively chromatic fashion a spiral staircase of beat-locked-bass and Shasta-sheen strings. The S Clubbers saunter sonorously along the snow-paved sidewalks of tealight-illuminated Candy Cane Lane, all for the sake of punctuating their wish list with an asterisk: *Eliminate the “unrequited” and “long-distance” in the relationship. This winter brew concocted by songwriters Cathy Dennis and Simon Ellis goes down all smooth and buttery, like the creamiest of rum eggnogs, tapping into the alchemic wonder of the holiday season to spark visions of perennial munificence that melt away with the conclusion of winter break.

Not available from iTunes Music Store.