Idina Menzel put out a Christmas album titled Holiday Wishes in October. The singer takes on the usual standards like "White Christmas," "Silent Night" and "Baby It's Cold Outside," but her shining moment comes closer to the end of the album. Menzel decided to include a breathtaking version of Joni Mitchell's Christmas-themed classic "River." Her performance of the tune on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon blew viewers away.
Yes, we know you can sing, Idina. We have all heard "Let It Go" a million times, but this performance is devastatingly beautiful. Menzel lends her Broadway pipes and pop sensibilities to Mitchell's tune and lets the songwriter's words do the rest.
"I wish I had a river so long / I would teach my feet to fly / Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on / I made my baby say goodbye," she sings in the video below. Check it out.
"River" is off Mitchell's 1971 release Blue. It is regarded as one of the folk artist's best pieces.
"In portraying herself so starkly, she has risked the ridiculous to achieve the sublime. The results, though, are seldom ridiculous: On Blue she has matched her popular music skills with the purity and honesty of what was once called folk music and through the blend she has given us some of the most beautiful moments in recent popular music," Rolling Stone wrote, giving the album five out of five stars.
Holiday Wishes hit No. 6 on the Billboard 200 charts after its release.
Menzel is riding high from her Frozen success, and she recently hinted at a sequel to the animated hit. The singer also announced that she would be hitting the road in July for an exhaustive tour. Check out those dates here.
The soundtrack to Disney's Frozen was named 2014's best-selling album, beating out One Direction, Taylor Swift and Sam Smith. It spent 13 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
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