Surprisingly, the iconic American vocalist Judy Garland never made a full Christmas album. But thanks to Judy Garland impersonator Debbie Wileman’s A Christmas Garland, we get to hear what such a recording by the legendary singer might have sounded like. While you won’t be fooled into thinking you’re hearing Garland herself, Wileman’s vocal impersonation is extraordinary. She captures all the signature characteristics of Garland’s singing, the warmth and excitement, plus the wobbles and swoops and gaping vibrato. And in the higher registers, Wileman’s voice is actually much prettier than Garland’s.
Produced by Scott Stander, Wileman’s 12-track album proffers classic and contemporary Christmas songs in robust orchestral arrangements by Steve Orich. Never dwarfed, but seemingly energized by the electrifying instrumental accompaniment, it’s Wileman’s powerful vocal presence that leads the charge on every song. Four of the tracks are downright stupendous, some just fun, or warm and fuzzy, and others of solely conceptual appeal.
The real show-stoppers include the peppy arrangement of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (J. Fred Coots/Haven Gillespie) that, with its emphatic meter changes, opens the album with invitingly insistent rhythms. It’s followed by a pulsating arrangement of “Hard Candy Christmas” (Carol Hall) on which Wileman sounds, at times, more like Liza than Judy (but only in those ways that Liza Minnelli did, indeed, sound like her mother). More striking, is how Wileman’s performance convinces one that had Garland lived to hear this song (which was written for the 1978 Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) she would have thoroughly embraced it, rushed to record it, and performed it just like Wileman does. It gives one the uncanny feeling that Wileman’s capacity to channel Garland extends beyond imitation.
Similarly persuasive is Wileman’s rendition of the Mariah Carey mega-hit “All I Want for Christmas is You” (Carey and Walter Afanasieff), here sung in Garland’s style amid a punchy arrangement, heavily seasoned with exhilarating brass accents. But the album’s most pleasing track, I find, is the pairing of “Merry Christmas, Darling” (Richard Carpenter/Frank Pooler) and “It Only Happens When I Dance with You” (Irving Berlin). Not only does the arrangement build with magnificent emotional expressiveness, but from time to time Wileman’s voice takes on a boozy, blurred-diction quality that recalls Garland with what feels like genuine affection.
Wileman’s performance of “We Need a Little Christmas Medley” (Jerry Herman) will tickle one’s funny bone as it inserts quick one-liner quotes from famous carols into the strains of the beloved show tune from Mame (1966), while the pairing of “Little Drummer Boy” (Katherine Kennicott Davis) and “Peace on Earth” (Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman, and Buz Kohan) may pull on one’s heartstrings. It features, as a guest vocalist dueting with Wileman, that famously clean-cut pop/rock singer Pat Boone, now 91. In an engagingly quiet, contemplative arrangement the twosome initially sing together, then split apart, he continuing with “Little Drummer Boy” while she shifts into “Peace on Earth.” Though the two songs are performed simultaneously, we hear them both quite distinctly. It’s not at all confusing to our ears, but rather evocative of fuzzy feelings of hope and kinship.
While conceptually interesting, two selections composed by Garland’s close friend John Meyer add little to the album music-wise. The bitter “When Do the Words Come True,” written on the day of Garland’s funeral, imagines her inner feelings of dissatisfaction, with lyrics that complain of having “sung for my supper” while never getting the happiness promised in the lyrics of the songs she performed. And the sleepy “After the Holidays,” arranged in draggy waltz-time with haunting orchestrations that border on creepy, signifies only insofar as it gives us a chance to hear a song Garland performed on TV’s The Tonight Show, but never recorded.
Also conceptually interesting, is the “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane) track. It opens with spoken dialogue delivered by guest performer Margaret O’Brien, who originally sang the song with Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis. O’Brien’s participation lends a whiff of historical authenticity, but brings nothing musically, and Wileman’s singing sounds like an older Garland, not like Garland sounded as a young woman when she appeared in that movie.
The album’s only real problem, however, is its muted ending, which some simple re-ordering of tracks could easily fix. Wileman closes with a tender performance of “Christmas Time Is Here” (Vince Guaraldi/Lee Mendelson), her affecting vocals enhanced by Orich’s flitting piano accompaniment. At any other time I would have appreciated the track’s simple beauty, but to cap this entertainingly celebratory album—inspired by such a huge star persona—an upbeat, more vigorous finale is in order.
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Produced by Scott Stander and released on November 14, 2025.
Lisa Jo Sagolla is the author of "The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken" and "Rock ‘n’ Roll Dances of the 1950s." A choreographer, critic, and historian, she has written for Back Stage, American Theatre, Film Journal International, and numerous other popular publications, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals. An adjunct professor at Columbia University and Rutgers, she is currently researching a book on the influence of Pennsylvania’s Bucks County on America’s musical theatre.
