The beauty of A Christmas Gift For You is that it doesn’t tinker dramatically with the Phil Spector formula. If anything, it’s Spector multiplied.

The songs have that big Spector beat—the relentless rush of rock ’n’ roll—and all manner of extraneous clatter. And they’ve been transformed to varying degrees into personal statements.

The bells, horns, and strings all over this album had been a part of Christmas music long before Spector came along, but Spector super-charged them, generating a sound so exciting that rock ’n’ roll Christmas albums ever since have felt obliged to follow the lead of A Christmas Gift.

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