It’s Friday so you know what that means! The next single off of A Philly Special Christmas Special has released featuring Patti LaBelle! Her and Jordan Mailata covered Chris Brown’s (Donny Hathaway’s) This Christmas:

REVIEW OF THE FIRST SONG “ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS”

Solid duet. Impossible not to bob your head to this.

Patti LaBelle and Mailata attacked that tune like a Jeff Stoutland run blocking scheme. Jordan chips the blitzing linebacker to slow him down and here comes the pulling guard, Patti in this case, out of nowhere with a blindside block so the ball carrier can get a hole to pay dirt. Beautiful. Between the ad-libbing and incorporating the studio band this year you can really appreciate the production in this album after two songs. Plus the claymation teasers for each song are a nice touch:

 

The best part about this song didn’t even make the album. Here’s behind the scenes of Jordan Mailata getting stage fright in front of a legend:

Here’s what I wrote over the summer when I heard This Christmas was a part of the tracklist:

Good fucking luck to whoever drew the short straw on this one. This Christmas starts and stops with Chris Brown. I don’t even know who originally wrote it. It doesn’t matter because it is Chris Brown’s now.

If you ask me I fucking nailed it. The producers knew it would take a monumental effort to do this classic an ounce of justice. So what did they do? Oh just hired 2x Grammy Award winner and one of Rolling Stones 100 Greatest Singers of All Time to give it the extra oomph it needed. That’s like the Eagles bringing in Julio Jones as the third wide receiver.

This song is still Chris Brown’s, but it was a valiant effort from Mailata and Patti.

I’m giving this 7/10 Kelce Clauses:

 

Check out our interview from this week with Charlie Hall (around 27:45) who produced both Christmas albums and plays drums in The War on Drugs. Find out what classic almost got left out: