Putting the "Win" Back in Winter!
While holiday-related songs vary in terms of genre; their religiosity or secular bent; their length; seriousness, and so on, what they typically have in common is overplay from an unspecified date a few weeks before Advent until the end of Christmas Day, at which they are yanked until the following November. A few of these tracks are too obscure to get played anymore period, let alone overplayed, but frequent airtime was surely the original intention.
Even an entire century’s worth of bad Xmas song lists would do scant justice to the injustice foisted on our eardrums the last couple months of year after blessed year. Therefore, if I have not yet grumbled gratuitously at your most loathed holiday chestnut, rest assured knowing that in future decades worse may indeed come to worst! For now, though, kick back with a hot buttered rum, as the yule log crackles on the hearth inside your Samsung Plasma HDTV.
As Garrison Keillor once said, “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” With that in mind, let’s just get this over with.
1. Adam Faith - “Lonely Pup (in a Christmas Shop)”
How much is that doggy in the window? Hmm, that depends on whether he’s one of the Singing Dogs.
In 1960, British vocalist, Adam Faith, unleashed a barking mad love letter to a canine critter that was so saccharine that the pooch could not be faulted for wanting to lay his fangs into his secret admirer.
Soft brown eyes that seem to say
Stay a while, I want to play
Would you, could you, do please stop?
He's a lonely pup in a Christmas shop
After this first verse, even the most loyal dog lovers start pricing kitty litter.
With his trademark Brit twit, music hall style, Faith rhymes:
Pity him, he's got no pop
He's a lonely pup in a Christmas shop
I tend to misread the first line as ending in “poop,” but I remember that “pop” is an old slang term for father. I think just about every animal in every pet store is sans parents by the time they’re put on the market, but then again, this is a “Christmas shop.” I’m not exactly sure what a Christmas shop is or why dogs are being sold there, but I’m pretty sure there’s a sign on this store requesting patrons to kindly leave their logic on the sidewalk.
Aside from the holiday name itself, there’s nothing really very Christmas-y about this song. Faith could just as easily have changed the lyrics to fit Easter or Guy Fawkes Day if it could score him a hit record, which it did briefly (This dog-eared song hit #4 on the UK singles chart in 1960, just in case you’re wondering), before it was picked up by so many proverbial pooper-scoopers and dropped into the obscure bin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_VJhCN3ck
2. Neil Diamond - “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
I know I harped on Mr. Diamond just three short years ago. Out of fairness to him given the multitude of other musical abortions that get released and sold this time of year, as well as to you the reader, I probably should have avoided this sort of redundancy. That said there’s a special place in my poison pen for white people who make truly awful and wrong-headed attempts at reggae. When Christmas songs get the reggae treatment from white folks, to quote a friend of mine, “It’s on!"
Perhaps influenced by Paul McCartney’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” a version of the song I lambasted five years back, Diamond employs a generically Rasta approach to the Christmas classic. “Mele Kalikimaka,” however lamely done, at least has the benefit of some geographic logic behind the choice of music. The matter of how Caribbean music got used not once, but twice, to tell the tale of a scarlet-nosed caribou on the North Pole is a question for the ages. However, this absurd track will shed zero light on the subject.
“Hello boys and girls! I’ve got a story to tell you about an unlikely hero. Dig it!” Neil hollers in an exceedingly horrifying attempt to sound like Bob Marley. A snare drum then kicks the music into 4/4 time signature over a Hammond organ. This rendition takes no lyrical liberties. The story of “poor Rudolph” not taking part in the “reindeer games” and Santa’s invitation to “guide my sleigh tonight,” are all told word for familiar word. Nevertheless, Neil Diamond’s growling, tin pan alley-style baritone could not conceivably be more ill-suited to this form of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bknFzJq16p0
3. Bryan Adams - “Run, Rudolph Run”
As with the previous entry, one could lodge similar complaints against this rock and roll cover. I can think of at least a few dozen rockers, both black and white, that could have given this Chuck Berry classic the treatment it deserves. Bryan (“(Everything I Do), I Do It for You”) Adams’ sterile, white-bred, schlock rock fails to deliver on multiple levels, however.
It’s easy to forget now, but Adams’ first few albums were all over rock radio stations in the early to mid 80’s. This is a fact I’m sure most of those stations would like to forget since he transitioned completely to power ballads, most notably the aforementioned song popularized by the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack. Cuts Like a Knife, Reckless, and their ilk all consist of middle-of-the-road pop with no edge or soul whatsoever (Save for that duet he did with Tina Turner that wasn’t half bad), but there was enough guitar and drum work to at least fall under the rock and roll umbrella. “Run Rudolph Run,” though released on the 2000 compilation A Very Special Christmas, may have been recorded much earlier, as it seems to fall under the rock umbrella as well…though just barely. Certainly not enough to stay completely dry in the wake of this Canadian sap machine.
As if it weren’t bad enough that the every note of the song is a reminder of Adams’ inferiority to Berry and that there are younger people who probably think this is a song BY Bryan Adams, the lyrics are altered slightly. The last line of the song is changed form “reelin’ like a merry go round” to “runnin’ like a son of a gun.” These new words don’t improve the song at all, but I’m sure they provide just enough of a contrast to guarantee Adams additional royalty rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOXW7f3Kj3g
4. Kimberly Locke - “Up on the Housetop”
This song was written in 1864 by Ohio-an Benjami Hanby and was much later made famous by Gene Autry in 1953. It’s a corny piece of Americana that can be just a tad likeable this time of year in the right hands. In 2005, this former American Idol contestant used her histrionic hands to turn it into generic pop that sounds vaguely as if it’s meant to be heartfelt or something.
Locke emotes to a degree usually reserved for Jesus or “The Star Spangled Banner.” I defy you to hold your hand over your heart and sing the following words with a straight face:
Ho ho ho, who wouldn’t go
Ho ho ho, who wouldn’t go
Locke’s Christmas album is full of many of the other holiday standards we all know. One suspects, though, that whether she is singing about Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, or Buddy the Elf, that she is performing with one at least one moist eye on melting the hardened hearts of a panel of judges.
After Locke brings the final notes of the song to a stirring close, I expect someone to shout, “Play ball!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpYGPiC-F_4
5. The Pledge Drive - “Christmas Rhapsody”
OK, sure, they took what was already a great Queen song and cleverly rearranged the lyrics to fit the season. Let’s make them honorary Mensa members for their brilliant effort and give the song a skip, shall we? I greatly value and admire smarts. God knows they seem to be in short supply in the world these days. Cleverness rarely cuts it for me musically, though, at least for its own sake. Besides, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” much like “Stairway to Heaven” - especially after Wayne’s World parodied it - is a song I’ve officially heard too many times, and I’ve been unable to sit all the way through it since.
Sung in a computer-enhanced voice that’s supposed to sound like Freddie Mercury, but could just as easily be Juice Newton, the pseudo-operatic lyrics begin:
Is this the Yuletide?
It's such a mystery
Will I be denied
Or will there be gifts for me?
It’s almost funny… once. Does it hold up to repeated listens? Not likely.
I'm such a bad boy, nobody loves me
He's such a bad boy, from a bad family
Big chunks of coal should go under his tree
OK, the absurdity is indeed killing me here! It’s hard not to picture Wayne and Garth bopping their heads along while wearing Santa hats.
So you think you can snub me and give me no gifts
So you think you can put me on your bad boy list
Oh, Santa
Can't do this to me, Santa
Just gotta be nice
Just gotta be nice for next year
Did I mention they’re clever? They apparently aren’t clever enough to effectively muscle their way any further into Weird Al Yankovic’s turf, though. Several years later, this generally unknown outfit still has yet to have a Wiki page created in their name.
Christmas really matters
Anyone can see
Christmas really matters
Christmas really matters to me
Aw. I’m right there with you guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rwbg3z_rNk
6. The Little Stinkers - “I Farted on Santa’s Lap (Now Christmas Is Going to Stink for Me)”
Every year that I’ve created this list of worst holiday music, there has been at least one entry that is so ridiculously awful and tasteless that inclusion on this list should trigger nothing more than a collective “Duh!” This, it would seem, is that kind of bad. And still somehow this Xmas record sold well to chart on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles in 2002.
Unlike the last entry, the word “clever” has no business being in the same time zone as this song. However, when kids’ voices are recorded, sentimental value for some folks goes so completely off the charts that so many brains are checked at so many doors. Yes, gas can be funny, and I’m not too much of a snob to admit this. Still and all, many fart jokes reek far worse than the source material.
The little stinker/narrator of this song had, you guessed it, too many beans for dinner. At the mall, much as she tries to hide it, “When I sat down on Santa's lap, he hollered ‘What's that smell!’” I seem to recall sitting on the laps of a few red coat-clad men whose stench was far greater than the sum of a year’s worth of flatulence, but never mind…
Now, Little Susie finds herself in a dilemma thanks to her indiscreet breaking of wind.
I asked him for a lot of things I'll have to do without
'Cause when I sat on Santa's lap, I let one slip out
Never fear, her comeuppance ivolves no withholding of toys on Santa’s part, though, you guessed it, the jolly, fat man is rather fond of the legumes himself. After Kris Kringle filled all the stockings and laid a finger aside of his nose, he
“…blew a fart with such great force our tree almost came down
And so I'll always cherish that special moment when
I realized even old Saint Nick rips one now and then
Well, I’ll be galderned!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO5MsZFnfJc
7. Kenny Rogers and Wynona Judd - Mary Did You Know?
Rogers has received some press in recent years for his very obvious plastic surgery. In addition to the changes to his mug, however, over the course of his long musical (and acting) career, he has also “reconstructed” his vocal style. From New Christy Minstrel to the acid rock of the First Edition to the folk-oriented, country music he made most famous to his more anodyne pop, Kenny has evolved musically, though not always for the better.
One could argue that among the much more secular holiday fare floating in the ether that this song at least has something to do with the actual holiday of Christmas. And, one would be right. Still, one can also be forgiven for confusing The Gambler with Highway 61 Revisited after hearing this snoozer. Also, while I can’t say that Wynona Judd has traditionally caused me to be a gushing fanboy either, she has put her name to better things than this.
Yes, the song is about Jesus, the “reason for the season” and all that. And somehow, after multiple tedious verses like the following, making a deal with the Devil seems like a viable, nay sensible, option.
Mary did you know that your baby boy
Will one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy
Will save our sons and daughters
The music to which these lyrics are put could almost be called sappy, but at least “sap” has the ability to make the listener feel, I don’t know … something. I have more respect for the inventiveness of the Music on Hold industry after sitting through this lifeless muzak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQM2rszMAfY
8. Glee - “Let It Snow”
Before the show relied more and more heavily on thematic gimmickry and started becoming too self-important for its own good, I was willing to acknowledge that the series’ writers have talent. Also, the characters, though in some ways more like caricatures, managed to pull me back in for a number of weeks, much as I wanted to resist the idea of a high school melodrama. The music, on the other hand, has never failed to make me cringe.
In this smooth (And by smooth, I mean sanded to an absolutely pristine polish) jazzy version of the holiday number, the Glee Cast is given credit, though the only voices seem to be those of Chris Colfer and Darren Criss (Kurt and Blaine). The real star performer, as always, is Auto-Tune, however. I’m pretty sure there is a clause in the program’s contract that states that top billing and unlimited royalties checks be given to Auto-Tune for the remainder of the show’s existence on prime time and in syndication. Not a single song has escaped this incessant pitch-correction technology. And this is baffling given the number of actually talented singers aboard this ship of secondary school-ers.
For the record, Auto-Tune was invented by an engineer working for Exxon. How’s that for un-cooling this fad?
Oh, the weather outside is indeed frightful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfvUTXXh8AM
9. Sufjan Stevens - “Christmas Unicorn”
I can’t deny that Sufjan Stevens is an interesting songwriter. Who else would write a song about all fifty states, for example? Because he’s different and thoughtful, I usually give him the benefit of the doubt and grant that his fans may be on to something I haven’t quite figured out. The songs I know are agreeable in an acoustic, singer-songwriter-y sort of way, but I still have yet to connect very personally with his music, especially his breathy voice.
He is also no stranger to the world of Christmas music. He has released an astonishing one hundred Christmas songs, quite a few of them original compositions. I guess that awkward issue of what to wish Sufjan each December is not an issue for his friends. Again, I’ve kinda, maybe, sorta liked the other Christmas songs of his I know and have previously avoided including him on these worst Xmas lists for that reason. I’ve heard his vocal style described as “twee,” a term I have not yet incorporated into my own parlance. After enduring this track, I think I finally know what’s meant by that word. Clocking in at 12:29, Stevens also seems to be straining for prog cred. This track is protracted enough that it could be mistaken for a pre-edited ELP or King Crimson cut. Furthermore, the chorus is repeated over and over for the last several minutes, much like “Hey Jude,” though the Beatles song ends as abruptly as a Ramones track by comparison.
To the best of my understanding, I have determined that this song’s point is that Christmas is a confusing jumble of Christian and pagan traditions and peppermint macchiato, which of course is true. The ways in which so many of us love and celebrate this holiday are conflicted, and he implicates himself in this confusion and acknowledges that “It’s all right, I love you.” Well, thank you, Suf!
Again, this guy is no slouch and probably would make a great literary conversationalist over a cup of Earl Grey. Head scratch-inducing verses such as the following perhaps should have been left on the paper scraps in his favorite Brooklyn café, though.
Oh, I'm a mystical apostasy, I'm a horse with a fantasy twist
Though I play all night, with my magical kite, people say I don't exist
For I make no full apology for the category I reside
I'm a mythical mess, with a treasury chest, I'm a construct of your mind
Uhhhh…”Fa la la la la, la la la la…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cPQn6vOdo
10. Jim Reeves - “Merry Christmas Polka”
I couldn’t create this many bad Xmas music lists without including at least one polka number. Well, here’s that token polka tune. Texas country and western star Reeves had no particular connection to Central European dance, so this seems to have been a one-off for him as well.
There are no beer barrels in this polka, but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for downing a couple before attempting to listen to this one, joyful and innocent as the lyrics may seem.
Christmas trees and holly, make everyone so jolly
And love just fills the air
It's a wonderful world for a boy and a girl
While dancing the Christmas polka
Therein lies the problem. The words are beyond generically happy, and the vocal delivery is affable to a fault. One cannot hear this without being convinced that evil lurks just beneath the Norman Rockwell-like surface.
“Hear sleigh bells ringing, everybody's singing, dancing the Christmas polka” Reeves croons, sounding like an accordion player wearing suspenders made of human skin.
Even an entire century’s worth of bad Xmas song lists would do scant justice to the injustice foisted on our eardrums the last couple months of year after blessed year. Therefore, if I have not yet grumbled gratuitously at your most loathed holiday chestnut, rest assured knowing that in future decades worse may indeed come to worst! For now, though, kick back with a hot buttered rum, as the yule log crackles on the hearth inside your Samsung Plasma HDTV.
As Garrison Keillor once said, “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” With that in mind, let’s just get this over with.
1. Adam Faith - “Lonely Pup (in a Christmas Shop)”
How much is that doggy in the window? Hmm, that depends on whether he’s one of the Singing Dogs.
In 1960, British vocalist, Adam Faith, unleashed a barking mad love letter to a canine critter that was so saccharine that the pooch could not be faulted for wanting to lay his fangs into his secret admirer.
Soft brown eyes that seem to say
Stay a while, I want to play
Would you, could you, do please stop?
He's a lonely pup in a Christmas shop
After this first verse, even the most loyal dog lovers start pricing kitty litter.
With his trademark Brit twit, music hall style, Faith rhymes:
Pity him, he's got no pop
He's a lonely pup in a Christmas shop
I tend to misread the first line as ending in “poop,” but I remember that “pop” is an old slang term for father. I think just about every animal in every pet store is sans parents by the time they’re put on the market, but then again, this is a “Christmas shop.” I’m not exactly sure what a Christmas shop is or why dogs are being sold there, but I’m pretty sure there’s a sign on this store requesting patrons to kindly leave their logic on the sidewalk.
Aside from the holiday name itself, there’s nothing really very Christmas-y about this song. Faith could just as easily have changed the lyrics to fit Easter or Guy Fawkes Day if it could score him a hit record, which it did briefly (This dog-eared song hit #4 on the UK singles chart in 1960, just in case you’re wondering), before it was picked up by so many proverbial pooper-scoopers and dropped into the obscure bin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_VJhCN3ck
2. Neil Diamond - “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
I know I harped on Mr. Diamond just three short years ago. Out of fairness to him given the multitude of other musical abortions that get released and sold this time of year, as well as to you the reader, I probably should have avoided this sort of redundancy. That said there’s a special place in my poison pen for white people who make truly awful and wrong-headed attempts at reggae. When Christmas songs get the reggae treatment from white folks, to quote a friend of mine, “It’s on!"
Perhaps influenced by Paul McCartney’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” a version of the song I lambasted five years back, Diamond employs a generically Rasta approach to the Christmas classic. “Mele Kalikimaka,” however lamely done, at least has the benefit of some geographic logic behind the choice of music. The matter of how Caribbean music got used not once, but twice, to tell the tale of a scarlet-nosed caribou on the North Pole is a question for the ages. However, this absurd track will shed zero light on the subject.
“Hello boys and girls! I’ve got a story to tell you about an unlikely hero. Dig it!” Neil hollers in an exceedingly horrifying attempt to sound like Bob Marley. A snare drum then kicks the music into 4/4 time signature over a Hammond organ. This rendition takes no lyrical liberties. The story of “poor Rudolph” not taking part in the “reindeer games” and Santa’s invitation to “guide my sleigh tonight,” are all told word for familiar word. Nevertheless, Neil Diamond’s growling, tin pan alley-style baritone could not conceivably be more ill-suited to this form of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bknFzJq16p0
3. Bryan Adams - “Run, Rudolph Run”
As with the previous entry, one could lodge similar complaints against this rock and roll cover. I can think of at least a few dozen rockers, both black and white, that could have given this Chuck Berry classic the treatment it deserves. Bryan (“(Everything I Do), I Do It for You”) Adams’ sterile, white-bred, schlock rock fails to deliver on multiple levels, however.
It’s easy to forget now, but Adams’ first few albums were all over rock radio stations in the early to mid 80’s. This is a fact I’m sure most of those stations would like to forget since he transitioned completely to power ballads, most notably the aforementioned song popularized by the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack. Cuts Like a Knife, Reckless, and their ilk all consist of middle-of-the-road pop with no edge or soul whatsoever (Save for that duet he did with Tina Turner that wasn’t half bad), but there was enough guitar and drum work to at least fall under the rock and roll umbrella. “Run Rudolph Run,” though released on the 2000 compilation A Very Special Christmas, may have been recorded much earlier, as it seems to fall under the rock umbrella as well…though just barely. Certainly not enough to stay completely dry in the wake of this Canadian sap machine.
As if it weren’t bad enough that the every note of the song is a reminder of Adams’ inferiority to Berry and that there are younger people who probably think this is a song BY Bryan Adams, the lyrics are altered slightly. The last line of the song is changed form “reelin’ like a merry go round” to “runnin’ like a son of a gun.” These new words don’t improve the song at all, but I’m sure they provide just enough of a contrast to guarantee Adams additional royalty rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOXW7f3Kj3g
4. Kimberly Locke - “Up on the Housetop”
This song was written in 1864 by Ohio-an Benjami Hanby and was much later made famous by Gene Autry in 1953. It’s a corny piece of Americana that can be just a tad likeable this time of year in the right hands. In 2005, this former American Idol contestant used her histrionic hands to turn it into generic pop that sounds vaguely as if it’s meant to be heartfelt or something.
Locke emotes to a degree usually reserved for Jesus or “The Star Spangled Banner.” I defy you to hold your hand over your heart and sing the following words with a straight face:
Ho ho ho, who wouldn’t go
Ho ho ho, who wouldn’t go
Locke’s Christmas album is full of many of the other holiday standards we all know. One suspects, though, that whether she is singing about Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, or Buddy the Elf, that she is performing with one at least one moist eye on melting the hardened hearts of a panel of judges.
After Locke brings the final notes of the song to a stirring close, I expect someone to shout, “Play ball!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpYGPiC-F_4
5. The Pledge Drive - “Christmas Rhapsody”
OK, sure, they took what was already a great Queen song and cleverly rearranged the lyrics to fit the season. Let’s make them honorary Mensa members for their brilliant effort and give the song a skip, shall we? I greatly value and admire smarts. God knows they seem to be in short supply in the world these days. Cleverness rarely cuts it for me musically, though, at least for its own sake. Besides, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” much like “Stairway to Heaven” - especially after Wayne’s World parodied it - is a song I’ve officially heard too many times, and I’ve been unable to sit all the way through it since.
Sung in a computer-enhanced voice that’s supposed to sound like Freddie Mercury, but could just as easily be Juice Newton, the pseudo-operatic lyrics begin:
Is this the Yuletide?
It's such a mystery
Will I be denied
Or will there be gifts for me?
It’s almost funny… once. Does it hold up to repeated listens? Not likely.
I'm such a bad boy, nobody loves me
He's such a bad boy, from a bad family
Big chunks of coal should go under his tree
OK, the absurdity is indeed killing me here! It’s hard not to picture Wayne and Garth bopping their heads along while wearing Santa hats.
So you think you can snub me and give me no gifts
So you think you can put me on your bad boy list
Oh, Santa
Can't do this to me, Santa
Just gotta be nice
Just gotta be nice for next year
Did I mention they’re clever? They apparently aren’t clever enough to effectively muscle their way any further into Weird Al Yankovic’s turf, though. Several years later, this generally unknown outfit still has yet to have a Wiki page created in their name.
Christmas really matters
Anyone can see
Christmas really matters
Christmas really matters to me
Aw. I’m right there with you guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rwbg3z_rNk
6. The Little Stinkers - “I Farted on Santa’s Lap (Now Christmas Is Going to Stink for Me)”
Every year that I’ve created this list of worst holiday music, there has been at least one entry that is so ridiculously awful and tasteless that inclusion on this list should trigger nothing more than a collective “Duh!” This, it would seem, is that kind of bad. And still somehow this Xmas record sold well to chart on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles in 2002.
Unlike the last entry, the word “clever” has no business being in the same time zone as this song. However, when kids’ voices are recorded, sentimental value for some folks goes so completely off the charts that so many brains are checked at so many doors. Yes, gas can be funny, and I’m not too much of a snob to admit this. Still and all, many fart jokes reek far worse than the source material.
The little stinker/narrator of this song had, you guessed it, too many beans for dinner. At the mall, much as she tries to hide it, “When I sat down on Santa's lap, he hollered ‘What's that smell!’” I seem to recall sitting on the laps of a few red coat-clad men whose stench was far greater than the sum of a year’s worth of flatulence, but never mind…
Now, Little Susie finds herself in a dilemma thanks to her indiscreet breaking of wind.
I asked him for a lot of things I'll have to do without
'Cause when I sat on Santa's lap, I let one slip out
Never fear, her comeuppance ivolves no withholding of toys on Santa’s part, though, you guessed it, the jolly, fat man is rather fond of the legumes himself. After Kris Kringle filled all the stockings and laid a finger aside of his nose, he
“…blew a fart with such great force our tree almost came down
And so I'll always cherish that special moment when
I realized even old Saint Nick rips one now and then
Well, I’ll be galderned!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO5MsZFnfJc
7. Kenny Rogers and Wynona Judd - Mary Did You Know?
Rogers has received some press in recent years for his very obvious plastic surgery. In addition to the changes to his mug, however, over the course of his long musical (and acting) career, he has also “reconstructed” his vocal style. From New Christy Minstrel to the acid rock of the First Edition to the folk-oriented, country music he made most famous to his more anodyne pop, Kenny has evolved musically, though not always for the better.
One could argue that among the much more secular holiday fare floating in the ether that this song at least has something to do with the actual holiday of Christmas. And, one would be right. Still, one can also be forgiven for confusing The Gambler with Highway 61 Revisited after hearing this snoozer. Also, while I can’t say that Wynona Judd has traditionally caused me to be a gushing fanboy either, she has put her name to better things than this.
Yes, the song is about Jesus, the “reason for the season” and all that. And somehow, after multiple tedious verses like the following, making a deal with the Devil seems like a viable, nay sensible, option.
Mary did you know that your baby boy
Will one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy
Will save our sons and daughters
The music to which these lyrics are put could almost be called sappy, but at least “sap” has the ability to make the listener feel, I don’t know … something. I have more respect for the inventiveness of the Music on Hold industry after sitting through this lifeless muzak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQM2rszMAfY
8. Glee - “Let It Snow”
Before the show relied more and more heavily on thematic gimmickry and started becoming too self-important for its own good, I was willing to acknowledge that the series’ writers have talent. Also, the characters, though in some ways more like caricatures, managed to pull me back in for a number of weeks, much as I wanted to resist the idea of a high school melodrama. The music, on the other hand, has never failed to make me cringe.
In this smooth (And by smooth, I mean sanded to an absolutely pristine polish) jazzy version of the holiday number, the Glee Cast is given credit, though the only voices seem to be those of Chris Colfer and Darren Criss (Kurt and Blaine). The real star performer, as always, is Auto-Tune, however. I’m pretty sure there is a clause in the program’s contract that states that top billing and unlimited royalties checks be given to Auto-Tune for the remainder of the show’s existence on prime time and in syndication. Not a single song has escaped this incessant pitch-correction technology. And this is baffling given the number of actually talented singers aboard this ship of secondary school-ers.
For the record, Auto-Tune was invented by an engineer working for Exxon. How’s that for un-cooling this fad?
Oh, the weather outside is indeed frightful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfvUTXXh8AM
9. Sufjan Stevens - “Christmas Unicorn”
I can’t deny that Sufjan Stevens is an interesting songwriter. Who else would write a song about all fifty states, for example? Because he’s different and thoughtful, I usually give him the benefit of the doubt and grant that his fans may be on to something I haven’t quite figured out. The songs I know are agreeable in an acoustic, singer-songwriter-y sort of way, but I still have yet to connect very personally with his music, especially his breathy voice.
He is also no stranger to the world of Christmas music. He has released an astonishing one hundred Christmas songs, quite a few of them original compositions. I guess that awkward issue of what to wish Sufjan each December is not an issue for his friends. Again, I’ve kinda, maybe, sorta liked the other Christmas songs of his I know and have previously avoided including him on these worst Xmas lists for that reason. I’ve heard his vocal style described as “twee,” a term I have not yet incorporated into my own parlance. After enduring this track, I think I finally know what’s meant by that word. Clocking in at 12:29, Stevens also seems to be straining for prog cred. This track is protracted enough that it could be mistaken for a pre-edited ELP or King Crimson cut. Furthermore, the chorus is repeated over and over for the last several minutes, much like “Hey Jude,” though the Beatles song ends as abruptly as a Ramones track by comparison.
To the best of my understanding, I have determined that this song’s point is that Christmas is a confusing jumble of Christian and pagan traditions and peppermint macchiato, which of course is true. The ways in which so many of us love and celebrate this holiday are conflicted, and he implicates himself in this confusion and acknowledges that “It’s all right, I love you.” Well, thank you, Suf!
Again, this guy is no slouch and probably would make a great literary conversationalist over a cup of Earl Grey. Head scratch-inducing verses such as the following perhaps should have been left on the paper scraps in his favorite Brooklyn café, though.
Oh, I'm a mystical apostasy, I'm a horse with a fantasy twist
Though I play all night, with my magical kite, people say I don't exist
For I make no full apology for the category I reside
I'm a mythical mess, with a treasury chest, I'm a construct of your mind
Uhhhh…”Fa la la la la, la la la la…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cPQn6vOdo
10. Jim Reeves - “Merry Christmas Polka”
I couldn’t create this many bad Xmas music lists without including at least one polka number. Well, here’s that token polka tune. Texas country and western star Reeves had no particular connection to Central European dance, so this seems to have been a one-off for him as well.
There are no beer barrels in this polka, but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for downing a couple before attempting to listen to this one, joyful and innocent as the lyrics may seem.
Christmas trees and holly, make everyone so jolly
And love just fills the air
It's a wonderful world for a boy and a girl
While dancing the Christmas polka
Therein lies the problem. The words are beyond generically happy, and the vocal delivery is affable to a fault. One cannot hear this without being convinced that evil lurks just beneath the Norman Rockwell-like surface.
“Hear sleigh bells ringing, everybody's singing, dancing the Christmas polka” Reeves croons, sounding like an accordion player wearing suspenders made of human skin.