This Christmas, families around the world will be united by one thing – the sound of a crack-addled hasbeen croaking out pale imitations of her best-loved hits.

Amy Winehouse? Don't be silly – we're talking about the queen of substance-deranged power-ballads here, not the scabby-faced pretender to her crack-addled throne, here. That's right, Whitney Houston is back.

Well, sort of back. Whitney Houston's comeback album – her first for six years – will be released in time for Christmas. It'd be ready sooner, but it's going to take nine months of round-the-clock labour to photoshop the album's artwork so it looks like Whitney Houston's pupils are the same size and that she's got teeth and generally looks a bit less identical to Samuel L Jackson in Jungle Fever.

If the American government wants to catch Osama Bin Laden, it'll have its best shot at the end of the year. Everyone knows that Osama has a giant crush on Whitney Houston, and Whitney Houston has a new album coming out in the later stages of 2008, so if the CIA wants to know where he is, he'll either be found at the new releases section of HMV or smooshed up against the Today show window mouthing "Death to America! Marry me Whitney!" when Whitney inevitably does her comeback interview.

Yes, just when you though she'd given up music forever in favour of batting away imaginary demons in a crack-blasted frenzy, Whitney Houston is back. It's been a long journey for Whitney over the last few years – as well as being smashed out of her mind on hard drugs, she's also ended her possibly-abusive marriage to Bobby Brown, was forced to sell off just about everything she owns to prevent losing her house and had to endure dozens of witless arseholes murdering her best-known songs on Simon Cowell TV shows. No wonder she turned to crack.

But that's all in the past now, because the new Whitney Houston comeback album is almost ready according to Whitney's record label boss Clive Davis. Reuters reports:

Four songs have been completed for the as-yet-untitled project, and four more will be put to tape later this month, Davis said during Billboard's Music & Money Symposium at New York's St. Regis Hotel. "We're on track for a holiday release," he said. "We're not going to compromise who she is to fit into today's hip-hop radio market. The public wants Whitney material." Tracks earmarked for the album have been produced or written by Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am, producer/songwriter Sean Garrett and R&B singer Akon.

OK, two things immediately come to mind here. 1) Four songs? That's rubbish – Whitney Houston's comeback was announced 17 months ago. That's 119 days a song. At this rate we'll be lucky to hear the Whitney Houston comeback album before the Sun expands and engulfs the earth, and 2) Did Clive Davis mean to say "The public wants Whitney material?" Because if Akon and will.i.am are in charge then we think he might have meant "The public wants material that sounds like it's from a fizzy drink commercial."

Still, however dubious we are of Whitney Houston's comeback album ever happening, we've got our fingers crossed that it does. Not only will it give Whitney Houston a feeling of success that she's been missing for a decade, but it'll also mean that we won't have to see shelves full of lazily-repackaged Whitney Houston Greatest Hits albums like we've done for every year of our adult lives. And that has to be worth something.

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New Whitney Houston album set for holiday release – Reuters