27.11 / 22:03
Life
rosie o'donnell
retro record
That time Ricky Martin & Rosie O’Donnell teamed up for a closeted gay Christmas collab
The Rosie O’Donnell Show, the beloved daytime talk show host released her first-ever Christmas album, A Rosie Christmas.The CD featured 14 holiday standards with some of the biggest music icons of the ’80s and ’90s, including Cher, Billy Joel, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Elton John, and Elmo, just to name a few.In 2000, she released a follow-up album called Another Rosie Christmas featuring 14 more collabs with some of music’s hottest up-and-comers at the time, including Jessica Simpson, The Dixie Chicks, Jewel, and Macy Gray, plus a veterans like Donna Summer and Barry Manilow.Among the roster of new talent was Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin, who had just made history one year earlier as the first male Latin act to debut at number one on Billboard 200 with his self-titled English crossover album.At the time, both O’Donnell and Martin weren’t publicly out, though rumors about each of them had been swirling for some time. The song “Ay, Ay, Ay It’s Christmas” is a salsa-infused Spanglish holiday track about a man begging his girlfriend for forgiveness after he forgets to buy her a present.