Worst Christmas songs

[The Kraig]

Just say it.

Do They Know It's Christmas (Feed the World) is shit and is more embarrassing by the year.

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday goes on for FAR too long.

Anything Michael Bublé has sang was better before he sang it.

Fairytale of New York is great, but a total downer.

Baby It's Cold Outside is a red flag.

Wonderful Christmastime is gash.

 

I guess I can't think of any other ones that piss me off at the moment, I'll come back later.

[Bobfoc]

All of them.

[King Ellis]

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year is garbage and doesn't even make sense. Who tells ghost stories at Christmas? Well, unless he meant A Christmas Carol...

[Gorka]

 

[The Kraig]

6 minutes ago, Gorka said:

 

We need an angry react.

[METALMAN]

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is wonderful. Most of the old fashioned Christmas carols are incredibly atmospheric. I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for the crooners stuff for its timey vibe. A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of the best albums ever. Last Christmas and the Ronettes and the Mariah Carey one are good. Wonderful Christmastime gets a pass because it’s just McCartney arsing around not taking himself too seriously and I like it when he does that. Saviour’s Day by Cliff Richard? Heavenly.

The rest of it though? Shite. The odes to consumerism? Shite. The smart-arse ironic askance look at the consumerism from two-bit indie and punk bands? Shite. The smooth jazz chill out stuff? Shite. FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK? Really really really shite and the fact that nob-ends say it’s the only good Christmas song because “it’s alternative and it has swearing and that” makes it even more SHITE. Schlocky over-produced shite - a song that was made to be performed in the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special. A little Celtic music holiday for people who know nothing about the real musical tradition. I’m going to put that down as my worst song because of the regard it is held in by people who should really know better. Santa Baby is a distant second because it is just really shit.

When it comes to Christmas music the real question isn’t about what’s bad or what’s good. It’s why don’t you just shut up and put Saviour’s Day by Cliff Richard on repeat for the full month?

 

[LittleDaniel]

When I worked retail my answer would have been "fucking all of them."

Now that I don't spend 40+hrs/week listening to it from October through MLK Day...my answer is "all of them, yeah, but they're more annoying than awful."

[gunnar hendershow]

Wonderful Christmastime is a dreadful song that people have worked for over 50 years to convince themselves is good because it's got Paul McCartney attached to it. But it's Paul McCartney phoning it in for a Christmas cash grab.

[METALMAN]

8 minutes ago, damshow said:

Wonderful Christmastime is a dreadful song that people have worked for over 50 years to convince themselves is good because it's got Paul McCartney attached to it. But it's Paul McCartney phoning it in for a Christmas cash grab.

This is a good point because one hit wonder Paul McCartney is clearly dearly in need of the royalties.

Like it or not (I do, tbf) that vibe is very much in keeping with McCartney’s approach at the time. He was very into making recordings that sounded amateurish but actually involved a lot of work. Basically the Pavement of his day.

[Colly]

I love Wonderful Christmastime generally, but this pushes it over the edge for me.

 

[METALMAN]

1 minute ago, Colly said:

I love Wonderful Christmastime generally, but this pushes it over the edge for me.

 

 

[King Ellis]

Hang on, I just remembered this exists:

Also in the category of Christmas songs that inspired TV movies: The Christmas Shoes. Christmas Shoes though is kinda bland and inoffensive, it's horribly over the top in being manipulatively emotional but that kinda amuses me. Capital C though, we get assaulted with 'war on Christmas' rhetoric both musically and with shoehorned stand up comedy excerpts!

[Colly]

Video isnt

6 minutes ago, METALMAN said:

 

Video isn't as good.

[Hobo]

I'm of the opinion that Baby, It's Cold Outside is ... not great. But not for the reasons you might think. In it's original context it is about a woman who wants to stay at her boyfriends house but is playing coy about it because in 1949 that was less socially acceptable. Of course, it has aged poorly. That's true. It doesn't sound like that to a modern ear. But mainly, it's just kinda dull?

Fairytale of New York was destroyed for me by years spent renting a room from a family in college where the kids blared the song every Christmas. Plus the more recent furor over the line with the slur even though the song has alternate lyrics that had been used long before all that.

I hate Bruce Springsteen singing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town for some reason. I don't know why.  I also don't like Feliz Navidad. There's really nothing going on there.

5 minutes ago, King Ellis said:

Hang on, I just remembered this exists:

Also in the category of Christmas songs that inspired TV movies: The Christmas Shoes. Christmas Shoes though is kinda bland and inoffensive, it's horribly over the top in being manipulatively emotional but that kinda amuses me. Capital C though, we get assaulted with 'war on Christmas' rhetoric both musically and with shoehorned stand up comedy excerpts!

I have seen at least 2 or more Christmas Shoes movies. Admitedly, not sober. Which was kinda why we watched them.

I'm not a massive Christmas song fan really. I've done a thing every year where I just compile a playlist of songs with Christmas in the title or that make mention of Christmas at all around this time of year from all the songs I have on my External HD. So, I end up with a playlist featuring stuff like Scott Walker's "The Day the “Conducator” Died (An Xmas Song)"  and the theme from "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence" by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

 

[King Ellis]

3 minutes ago, Hobo said:

I have seen at least 2 or more Christmas Shoes movies. Admitedly, not sober. Which was kinda why we watched them.

Fair play to them because they manage to get some names in there: Rob Lowe, NPH, James Remar. They also have this image which is hilarious and creepy in equal measure:

[Dang117]

Last Christmas is overrated and I despise Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine

[GhostMachine]

I've only heard the WHAM! version of Last Christmas twice this month. On the 16th, and again today. Never had heard Mistletoe and Wine. Cliff Richard is basically a one-hit wonder here in the U.S., with Devil Woman.

Wonderful Christmastime is one of my least favorite songs, period. Christmas or otherwise. And I actually heard a cover of it yesterday. No clue who it was by, but it was a female singer.

 

 

[Schlitzbrille]

Run Run Rudolph.

Every version.

[Colly]

11 hours ago, Hobo said:

I hate Bruce Springsteen singing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town for some reason. I don't know why.

It's because he sounds like he's singing it in the middle of a fairly tricky bowel movement.

[lanky316]

10 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

Cliff Richard is basically a one-hit wonder here in the U.S., with Devil Woman.

Our transatlantic brethren being spared the horror of The Lords Prayer, but to the tune of Auld Lang Syne!