ADRIAN THRILLS: Cliff, Louis or Joss? We pick out the festive crackers

Soulful delights, seasonal schmaltz… and Cliff revisiting his inner Elvis — pop’s finest are decking the halls with their new Christmas albums.

Adrian Thrills sorts the crackers from the turkeys.

JOSS STONE: Merry Christmas, Love (S-Curve)

The brightest of this year’s musical baubles is Joss Stone’s first festive offering. Merry Christmas, Love puts a soulful, feminine slant on the genre by placing the onus on her expressive voice and adorning it with lush, retro strings… and just the right amount of Yuletide kitsch. Having given birth to a son in October, the former teen sensation is now a mother of two and she brings a family feel to Let It Snow and Winter Wonderland.

Stevie Wonder’s What Christmas Means To Me is a swinging Motown pastiche and the warm-hearted Bring On Christmas Day is the best of two new originals.

Rating: **** 

The brightest of this year’s musical baubles is Joss Stone’s (pictured) first festive offering

Merry Christmas, Love puts a soulful, feminine slant on the genre by placing the onus on her expressive voice and adorning it with lush, retro strings… and just the right amount of Yuletide kitsch

ANDREA CORR: The Christmas Album (EastWest)

The Corrs’ singer was inspired to make her first festive album, out today, after performing Christmas favourites at Our Lady’s Hospice in Dublin. The mood is quiet and reflective, with the onus on the season’s spiritual traditions. The 19th-century carol Curoo Curoo is given a Celtic makeover with help from Irish supergroup Zodomo.

Begin Again, a new song, nods to both God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and the swirling folk-rock that made The Corrs one of the world’s biggest bands.

Top of the tree, however, is Andrea’s take on Elvis’s Blue Christmas — re-imagined here as a twangy country duet with a throaty Ronnie Wood.

Rating: **** 

The Corrs’ singer was inspired to make her first festive album, out today, after performing Christmas favourites at Our Lady’s Hospice in Dublin

CLIFF RICHARD: Christmas With Cliff (EastWest)

No singer is more synonymous with Christmas than the evergreen Cliff. With a BBC holiday special out this month, he returns with his first festive album in 19 years. Released in magazine format to get CDs into more supermarkets, Christmas With Cliff stays solidly in the middle of the road. There’s nothing to match Mistletoe And Wine among three new songs, but there is a clever nod to his 1968 Eurovision entry Congratulations on Sleigh Ride.

The best moments come when he revisits his rock ’n’ roll roots: like Andrea Corr, he also covers Blue Christmas, with his take harking back to the days when he was billed as the UK’s answer to Elvis.

Rating: *** 

No singer is more synonymous with Christmas than the evergreen Cliff. With a BBC holiday special out this month, he returns with his first festive album in 19 years

Released in magazine format to get CDs into more supermarkets, Christmas With Cliff stays solidly in the middle of the road

SIA: Everyday Is Christmas (Atlantic Snowman Deluxe Edition)

Sia’s Christmas offering is the gift that keeps on giving, having been expanded and updated three times since its initial release in 2017.

The latest renovation (it’s now practically a double album) crams our stockings with three new numbers and a remix.

The original LP packed a smarter emotional punch than most midwinter releases, but diminishing returns are now setting in.

Naughty & Nice is spiced with innuendo and the doo-wop- flavoured 12 Nights counts down the number of sleeps to the big day, but the best of the new additions is a fresh mix of the strongest track on the original album, the deliciously dark ballad Snowman.

Rating: *** 

Sia’s Christmas offering is the gift that keeps on giving, having been expanded and updated three times since its initial release in 2017

LINDSEY STIRLING: Snow Waltz (Concord)

Another seasonal fixture is electric violinist Lindsey Stirling. The U.S. YouTube sensation is famous for live shows that include moon-walking routines and floor-skimming back-bends, all executed as she reels off complex instrumentals. This is her second Christmas album (third if you add the deluxe edition of 2017’s Warmer In The Winter) and it’s a flamboyant affair, with styles ranging from amped-up flamenco (Feliz Navidad) to the beats-driven (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen).

Mesmerising in places, Snow Waltz is bolstered by cameos from pop vocalists Bonnie McKee, Lauren Frawley and David Archuleta.

Rating: *** 

Mesmerising in places, Snow Waltz is bolstered by cameos from pop vocalists Bonnie McKee, Lauren Frawley and David Archuleta

BACKSTREET BOYS: A Very Backstreet Christmas (BMG)

The best-selling boy band of all time made a polished return with their tenth album, DNA, three years ago, but their first venture into the festive market is Christmas cheese of the highest order. The quintet’s flawless harmonies are to the fore on an a capella Winter Wonderland, but a tepid take on George Michael’s Last Christmas is more representative.

Of the three new songs, the best is Happy Days, which channels the disco spirit of Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling! with nods to Prince and Marvin Gaye.

Rating: ** 

Of the three new songs, the best is Happy Days, which channels the disco spirit of Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling! with nods to Prince and Marvin Gaye

DAVID FOSTER & KATHARINE McPHEE: Christmas Songs (Loma Vista)

Having produced Michael Bublé’s Christmas, Rod Stewart’s Merry Christmas, Baby, and Mary J. Blige’s A Mary Christmas, Canadian musician David Foster is a connoisseur of the classy festive collection.

This joint effort with his wife Katharine McPhee, an American Idol runner-up and Broadway singer, began life in their living room and is as smooth and schmaltzy as anything on Bublé’s 2011 blockbuster.

Amid a snazzy Jingle Bell Rock and jazzy Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, it also contains this year’s third version of Blue Christmas, sung this time as a showy, theatrical ballad.

Rating: *** 

Canadian musician David Foster is a connoisseur of the classy festive collection. This joint effort with his wife Katharine McPhee began life in their living room and is as smooth and schmaltzy as anything on Bublé’s 2011 blockbuster

LOUIS ARMSTRONG: Louis Wishes You A Cool Yule (Verve)

‘From Coney Island to the Sunset Strip, somebody’s gonna make a happy trip,’ sings Satchmo on an album that gathers all his Yuletide recordings together on a single album for the first time.

There are boisterous big band arrangements, scat-style vocals and sumptuous trumpet work.

Armstrong’s signature song, What A Wonderful World, is a baffling, not-particularly-Christmassy addition; but his duets with Ella Fitzgerald and Velma Middleton are a delight.

An unreleased spoken-word track from 1971, A Visit From St Nicholas, modernised with help from New Orleans jazz pianist Sullivan Fortner, is a bonus.

Rating: **** 

‘From Coney Island to the Sunset Strip, somebody’s gonna make a happy trip,’ sings Satchmo on an album that gathers all his Yuletide recordings together on a single album for the first time.

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