Christmas is just a few days away, which means that by now Christmas music is pretty much the ambient musical norm wherever you go: on the radio, in the store, at the restaurant, Christmas tunes are ubiquitous. While most of these holiday-oriented songs are perfectly fine, some are truly awful.
When it comes to lists of horrible Christmas songs, there is no shortage of opinions as to which songs are the worst. I, of course, have my own list of hated holiday tunes, which may or may not look different than other people's lists. For example, there are a lot of Christmas songs that other people can't stand but I tolerate: I can't get too worked up about either Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas I you," even though a lot of people utterly detest both songs. And there are probably some songs I hate that other people absolutely adore.
The following is my countdown of the worst ten Christmas songs that need to be canceled immediately. Note that I make no distinction between "novelty" Christmas songs and "serious" ones, because they all seem to get played this time of year regardless. (Besides, aren't all Christmas songs essentially "novelty" songs?)
10. Do They Know It's Christmas? (Band Aid)
A "feed the world" song performed by some of the biggest names in British pop music might have made sense in 1984, when countries like Ethiopia were being wracked by starvation and death caused by famine (and exacerbated by the brutal incompetence of the Soviet-aligned Derg regime in Addis Ababa). But this condescending, neo-colonialist dreck has not aged well and should be retired from the annual holiday rotation. Bono's sneering "well tonight thank God it's them instead of you" stanza is probably the most cringy Christmas lyric ever recored.
A "feed the world" song performed by some of the biggest names in British pop music might have made sense in 1984, when countries like Ethiopia were being wracked by starvation and death caused by famine (and exacerbated by the brutal incompetence of the Soviet-aligned Derg regime in Addis Ababa). But this condescending, neo-colonialist dreck has not aged well and should be retired from the annual holiday rotation. Bono's sneering "well tonight thank God it's them instead of you" stanza is probably the most cringy Christmas lyric ever recored.
9. I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas (Gayla Peevey)
This marching band-like tune from the early 50s, sung by a girl with an irritating nasally voice who thinks she's entitled to a wild animal for Christmas, was just a bad idea all around. No, you don't want a hippopotamus for Christmas: the animal is one of the most dangerous to humans, and it also does this:
A lot of people still think this song is "cute." But when I hear this girl prattle on about how she only likes "hippopotamuseses," I get the urge to smack someone.
8. The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) (Alvin and the Chipmunks)
The vocal tracks were sped up to create the high-pitched "chipmunk" voices in the song, which might have been cutting-edge technology when the song was recorded in 1958 but has not aged well. Put it this way: if I had to choose between listening to the grating, shrill, barely-intelligible vocals in this song or listening to fingernails on a blackboard, I'd probably opt for the latter. The song also features "bandleader" Ross Bagdasarian screaming at Alvin twice during the course of the two minute, twenty-second song, which is jarring as well.
It's hard to believe that this song went to #1 on the Billboard chart and won three Grammys in 1958. It's even harder to believe that this all-around unpleasant song is still played during the holidays today.
7. Jingle Bell Rock (originally by Bobby Helms)
I might be the only person the world who hates this song. But I hate it for the same reason that a lot of people hate Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" - it's a crass, obnoxious earworm. What the hell is a "jingle hop" or a "jingle horse" or a "jingle bell square?" How many times can you use the word "jingle" in a single song, anyway?
This is a 1950s-era "rock and roll is here, and it's really cool and hip, so let's make a Christmas song about it!" tune that should have been left in the fifties.
6. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (Jackson 5)
I'm sorry, but a song about a kid who witnesses his mom low-level cheating on his dad with Jolly Ol' Saint Nick isn't exactly one that brings me Christmas joy. In fact, it's sort of creepy. And, yes, I know the song's "inside joke" is that Santa is actually the kid's dad. But that only makes it even creepier because now it sounds like the kid is witnessing his parents' cosplay sex fetish.
But what's creepiest about this song is that Michael Jackson sang it, and then later would go on to (allegedly) sexually assault young boys.
(A side note: if Santa were real, can you imagine all the sex he would get? Bored and frazzled housewives all over the world would be throwing themselves at him to simultaneously thank him for bringing presents to their bratty kids and live out some weird daddy sex fantasy. Santa would be so busy banging moms that he wouldn't have time to deliver presents.)
5. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (originally by Brenda Lee)
If "Jingle Bell Rock" is a dated, 1950's "rock and roll is new and cool" earworm, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"is exponentially worse. The rockabilly guitar, the bleating saxophone, the nonsensical lyrics (seriously, what does "dancing merrily / in the new old-fashioned way" actually mean, anyway?) all combine to create a catchy-yet-repetitive tune that gets stuck in your head and won't leave you in peace. It's a song that can drive one to insanity, which is why I hate it.
Part of the problem with this song - both the Lee original and its multitude of covers - is that it's ridiculously overplayed. So much so that as of last week it became the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, 65 years after it was originally recorded. This is why America can't have nice things.
4. Merry Christmas With Love (Clay Aiken)
A friend of mine believes that this overproduced, maudlin piece of mush is "not only the worst Christmas song, it's probably one of the worst songs ever recorded." Having only been casually exposed to it before writing this blog entry, I decided to give it a close listen.
I couldn't even make it to the end.
To be fair to Aiken, his was not the song's original recording. But he chose to breathe new life into this auditory atrocity by covering it, so he deserves blame.
3. Santa Baby (originally by Eartha Kitt)
Speaking of sex and Santa... Here's a song about a woman with a ridiculously long wish list of lavish and expensive things she wants for Christmas, with a suggestive vibe that implies the singer is willing to trade sexual favors with Santa for said gifts. "Hurry down the chimney for me," indeed.
This sex-and-greed song has been covered countless times since the Eartha Kitt original, but it doesn't matter if it's Madonna's extra-raunchy version, or Michael Bublé's bizarre "bro" version: it's a fundamentally awful song. No wonder a couple of years ago a survey determined that it was America's most disliked Christmas song.
2. The Christmas Shoes (New Song)
A lot of people place this truly disturbing tune at the very top of their worst Christmas songs list, and for good reason: it is a horrible song that should never have been written or recorded. I personally give thanks to the fact that I don't hear this one very often, because I think most decent people are horrified by it and don't want to listen to it. Needless to say, if you think a song about a kid trying to buy shoes for his cancer-stricken, dying mother is somehow a "good" Christmas song, you really need to re-think what Christmas is all about.
A lot of people place this truly disturbing tune at the very top of their worst Christmas songs list, and for good reason: it is a horrible song that should never have been written or recorded. I personally give thanks to the fact that I don't hear this one very often, because I think most decent people are horrified by it and don't want to listen to it. Needless to say, if you think a song about a kid trying to buy shoes for his cancer-stricken, dying mother is somehow a "good" Christmas song, you really need to re-think what Christmas is all about.
But don't take it from me; here's Patton Oswald to explain just how depraved and ridiculous this musical monstrosity actually is:
I've already written about how much I hate this song, and not just because of the coercive, date-rapey creepiness implied by its annoying, call-and-response lyrics:
The song is melodically repetitive, monotonous and uninteresting; it lacks the most basic elements of songcraft, such as a bridge or a chorus. What's more, it's not even a song about Christmas; there's no mention of anything holiday-related in the lyrics. "It's cold outside" in January, February and even March, too, depending on where you live, so why is this piece of acoustic crap assumed to be a holiday song?
So while various artists can attempt to rehab this song's problematic image by changing the lyrics - see Me and Him reversing its gender roles, or John Legend and Kelly Clarkson creating a "consent" version - it's still just an all around shitty tune.
Please, quit playing this tiresome and repugnant not-a-Christmas song. It sucks.
In fact, please make the holiday season better for everyone by no longer playing any of the songs on this list.
No comments:
Post a Comment