By Kitty Empire


WHITNEY HOUSTON
One Wish - The Holiday Album (BMG)

ASHANTI
Ashanti's Christmas (Murder Inc)

Christmas has become an over-the-top occasion. All that conspicuous consumption and bling-bling tinsel needs a new soundtrack - those austere minor-key hymns just can't cut it any more, now that all the world's a 'hood. But hallelujah! Succour is at hand in the form of Whitney and Ashanti, two women well acquainted with maximum shimmer and well-worn traditional sentiments.

Of the two, Whitney's is the least catholic offering. She segues a jaunty 'Deck The Halls' into a funky 'Silent Night', and gets her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, to duet with her on 'Little Drummer Boy'. She even attempts an austere minor-key hymn - 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' - but can't resist adding fingersnaps and a jazzy denouement. It sounds like hell on earth.

Ashanti, meanwhile, just oozes over an assortment of pianos and jingling bells. It's nearly as bad. If there is any joy whatsoever to be derived from these two records, though, it is in the fact that one of these collections of cosy Christmas songs is coming out on the notorious hip-hop label Murder Inc, sporadically caught up in federal investigations for suspected links with a convicted drug dealer.