**1/2 Jennifer Holiday

THE BEST OF JENNIFER HOLIDAY

(Geffen)

Holiday's debut song, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," from the Broadway show Dreamgirls, fireworked her way to fame as a grand diva presence. But presence doesn't last much longer for a singer than a guitar note does for a guitarist, and because Holiday never again found a vehicle to back up her presence with a purpose, her singing career rapidly became irrelevant. Neither could her direct style take on the misshapen oddness that allows today's divas to camp. Her stagy showtune work, like "I Am Love" and "Hard Times for Lovers," lacks the steely inhumanity that makes a Whitney Houston performance a demon of bureaucracy. In dance jams like "No Frills Love" and "Heart on the Line," she cries high but narrowly; the music cries higher and envelops her. As she loses her footing in the too-ornate "This Game of Love (I'm Never Coming Down)" only to find some steadiness, but not enough, in "Say You Love Me," one wonders if, instead of Patti LaBelle's crown, she ought to seek the kind of straight-up, close-to-the-audience gospel pop that church-trained Oleta Adams has made her own. Holiday's uncluttered rendering of Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" cries out for just such an encore. Maybe now that her diva presence is past, we'll get to hear one.

-- Michael Freedberg