(Schwartz, Kierulf)
Album: My Only Wish (This Year) – Single (2000), Re-Release (2020) / Platinum Christmas
Many popstars lend their vocals to holiday classics. Some achieve success outside their fandom. But it is a rare instance where an artist adds an original piece to the already crowded Christmas lexicon. “My Only Wish (This Year)” made its debut in the holiday season of 2000 while she was still promoting Oops!... I Did It Again. Though it was released as a single in some markets, most American and European listeners could first access the Christmas tune as the lead track on the 2000 holiday compilation Platinum Christmas, where other contemporaries such as Christina Aguilera, *NSYNC, Monica, Whitney Houston, and Backstreet Boys also contributed songs. It is one of the few tracks off this compilation that has graduated into annual rotation on Christmas radio. With its bright bells, shuffle beat, and appropriately cutesy lyrics asking Santa for a new boyfriend, it’s exactly what one would hope for in a holiday pop song. Spears’s vocals are sweet but strong, filled with they Britney-isms we’d become accustomed to by winter of 2000 – plenty of “yeah yeahs,” “ooohs” and “I want my bay-bay, bay-bay.” Some sources give Spears co-writing credit, but her name was not included as a writer on the original Platinum Christmas CD insert, where the song made its debut. It may not have achieved the notoriety of say a Mariah Carey or Bing Crosby holiday classic (at least yet), but time has been kind to this track, and we expect we’ll continue to hear this holiday classic for Christmases to come. And we’re not mad about that!
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