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HO HO WHO: Demi Lovato, the former Disney star who’s trying desperately to adultify her image with sexy-whisper singing, strappy outfits, and exaggerated air grinding (it is a tale as old as time). She debuted her first album, Don’t Forget, in 2008, the same year she starred in the Disney Channel movie Camp Rock with the Jonas Brothers.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: If Lovato’s trying to enter a new stage of her career, she should run as fast as she can from “Sing My Song for You”—a tune she originally sang with Joe Jonas on her Disney show Sonny With a Chance. Their vocals are accompanied by a piano that’s much too soft to be paired with Lovato’s powerful voice. When a random chorus of singers joins Lovato and Jonas at the end, you can hardly tell the piano’s still there—it almost sounds a capella. That’s unfortunate, because the lyrics are too boring to support the song by themselves.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS ???: The song opens with “Didn’t know what to get you/ But I just found the perfect gift for you,” but never clearly says what the gift is. We’re left to assume the present is that they’re going to sing to each other, since they repeat the line “sing my song for you” ad nauseum. It makes you hope that “sing my song” is a coy metaphor for something else, because if not, singing this song to each other sounds like a pretty lame gift.
CHEER FACTOR: 3/10. It sounds like a sappy song from a tweenage Christmas special … because it is. But she’s trying.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, this post mistakenly said this was off a new Christmas EP. It is, in fact, a fan-made compilation. This post also mistakenly identified Nick Jonas as her duet partner on this track. It is Joe Jonas.