I was at the Japanese restaurant tonight, and the Old People Music station they normally have was playing “classic” Christmas music, all the traditional favourites, done in the crooner styles popular in the thirties and forties. And I heard what may be the Worst Christmas Song Ever:
Honky the Christmas Goose.
Yep. It must have been a children’s song, but I don’t remember hearing it before. Imagine my surprise to find, after a google search, that it was written and sung by former Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Johnny Bower… and that it made it to #29 on the Canadian pop charts in 1965.
All of them, for me(and anyone else working in retail, I’m sure). Lately it’s “Santa, Baby” that’s driving me up a wall. It’s just a sleazy song. Oh, and “Run, run, Rudolph”? I thought Rudolph flew.
Yeah, all christmas songs are, per defenition bad. When heard more than once the same christmas - horrible.
At the top (bottom?) of the list must be, for me, “Last Christmas”, I believe it’s called.
You know-
“Last christmas I gav you my heart, but the very next day, you gav it away. This year to sav me from tears[…]”
And he really pronounces it like that- gav instead of gave, and sav instead of save.
Maybe it’s some weird dialect with which I’m not familiar, but I hate it non the less.
There’s something weird about the way he says “gave” and “save” in that song? Huh. Doesn’t sound out of the ordinary to me. George Michael is English of Greek heritage, maybe that’s why he sings with an accent that you can hear.
I have a collection of Christmas songs that includes The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot, which is both dreadfully un-PC and depressing. in the street he envies all those lucky boys,
then wanders home to last year’s broken toys.
i’m so sorry for that laddie,
he hasn’t got a daddy,
the little boy that santa claus forgot.
The local “Peabo Bryson & John Tesh” station plays Christmas music all December, and at least once a day you’ll hear…
1.) the aforementioned “Last Christmas”
2.) “Same Old Lang Syne,” which really has nothing to do with Christmas,
3.) that God-forsaken Christmas Shoes song. I swear, the first time I heard it I had to pull the car over at the end of the first verse, I was laughing so hard.
But the worst has to be “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Just about every line of this song has some sort of logical inconsistency in it. First of all, of course the Africans that give a crap know it’s Christmas. A lot of them aren’t even Christians and thus probably don’t care. And there will in fact be snow in Africa, in the same places that it always snows in Africa whether people are starving to death or not, unlike here in sunny and prosperous Florida where we haven’t had a good Christmas snow in something like ten thousand years.
Yes, I know I’m being silly, but the song started it.
I’ve always HATED Santa Baby, no matter who sings it.
Some others that need to go away: Jingle Bells performed by Barking Dogs, and its imitators using other noises.
Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
All the songs in Rankin-Bass animated Christmas Specials (except for those in the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)
The literally flatulent renderings of Christmas songs on the Jib Jab site
And, while it isn’t specificcally Christmas, I really hate all versions of Baby, it’s Cold Outside.
Feliz Navidad, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and Jingle Bell Rock. Any radio station that plays these needs to be firebombed and whoever put together the playlist roasted over the flames.
The office is currently listening to SomaFm’s Xmas in Frisco feed which is err, eclectic. Anyway, about half an hour ago they played RuPaul’s “RuPaul the Red-nosed Drag Queen”. That was pretty bad.
I’ve not had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the first one of those, but as for the other two, I’ll stump up a gallon of gas even at UK prices (ten bucks a pop). Gah.
I heard"I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" at the grocery store yesterday. If this song didn’t mention Christmas, I don’t think anyone would ever listen to it even once. What is it about Christmas music that causes otherwise reasonable people to lose any sense of good taste?
They’re usually an oldies station, but go all Christmas starting Thanksgiving. The past two years, they botched it.
Last year, they played only slow and mournful Christmas songs. “Silent Night” was uptempo for them.
This year, they learned the wrong lesson. Everything is uptempo – but they only play about a dozen different songs. Three versions of “Rocking around the Christmas Tree” every hour. Two versions of “Santa Baby.” Two of “It’s Beginning to Look at Lot Like Christmas,” and, for a slower pace, “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.” The finish it up with the Crosby/Bowie “Little Drummer Boy.” Then repeat. And repeat.
Some of the songs are good, but hearing them every time you turn on the radio takes off the edge and makes you long for Tom Lehrer.
I’m hearing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer more times than I’d like to have this year, and for some reason have realized… those other reindeer are a bunch of sycophantic jackasses! They only like Rudolph 'cause he’s suddenly the big man’s right-hand reindeer, otherwise they’d still be giving him grief about his nose.
I actually like Feliz Navidad, it’s a nice peppy tune. When I was in my church folk group we’d end the Christmas Service with one verse of it as a way of sending everyone on their way. However, one verse of it a day is quite enough, go more than one verse or play it 20 times a day and yes it becomes quite horrible, unfortunately that’s what all the radio stations do with it.