No, I don’t mean those that are simply overrepeated on the radio, like Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas”. That’s not so bad in itself, and I know there are those who love it. Or “The Little Drummer Boy”, who badly needed to have those drumsticks jammed somewhere …
I mean songs that keep getting played despite having some serious problems with the lyrics that just put me out of the mood. Here’s a few of mine, and feel free to add your own.
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” - A child, a child, shivers in the cold / Let us bring him silver and gold. What kinda good is silver and gold gonna do him? Bring the kid a blanket instead, okay? Don’t you know he’s shivering? Just stop at the Bethlehem Wal-Mart and spend some of that silver on what he needs.
Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams - Where’s that, exactly? You’re going to celebrate at the whorehouse, or maybe the Champagne Room in the strip club? I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams - But you’ll be thinking how glad you are *not *to be with the family, while you’re getting another lap dance? I do understand; I just wish you’d say so.
“We Need a Little Christmas” - Trim up the tree before my spirit falls again. I get what that means as part of the plotline of Mame, she’s trying cheer up the family after they’ve lost everything in the stock market crash. But it just doesn’t fit a free-standing song. You’re supposed to enjoy the holiday on its own terms, not simply put the bad out of your mind, right?
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” - There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago. There will? Ghost stories are for a different holiday, one that only has one song anyway, and that’s “Monster Mash”. Unless that’s a reference to “A Christmas Carol”, where Scrooge was scared, but nobody else needs to be.
“It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas”: the second refrain has TWO extra bars so Mom and Dad can laugh at the kids having to go back to school. Dicks.
The entire fucking song. I loathe that song. I have always loathed that song from the first time I heard it. I’ve hated that song for at least 40 years.
Honestly, though, how many people know of “Christmas Ghost Stories” not by Dickens? I notice that your linked article doesn’t refer to any.
Dickens, by the way, wrote more than just that one Christmas Ghost Story – he also wrote The Man that Haunted Himself, one of Dickens’ other, much less successful Christmas books. It’s sort of Christmas Carol with the Scrooge-guy’s future self as the ghost of Christmas future. He also wrote a story -within-a-story of “The Goblin who Kidnapped a Sexton”, a sort of proto-Christmas Carl, inside the Pickwick Papers. Betcha nobody here has even heard of these, let alone read 'em.
I disagree on “We Need A Little Christmas.” I like that song on it’s own, and I never knew it was from Mame.
I think “before my spirit falls again” can be interpreted as a reaction to seasonal affective disorder. People make too much of the season, and WNALC is just saying “I want what it used to be, not this over-produced/over-commericialized thing we got now.”
Ever since I learned what a virgin was, and how it is 100% related to sexual intercourse, I’ve always felt extremely awkward about the whole concept of “The VIRGIN Mary” and the extended and excruciating line about a “viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIiiiiiiirgin mother and child” in “Silent Night” and having to sing it at church every year while sitting right next to my mom.
There’s a line in The Carpenters’ “Sleigh Ride” that hits on many conflicting emotions at once. I’m not sure if I love it, hate it, or simply love to hate it. It’s not the words to the line, it’s the way the vocalist performs it.
At 1:33, the guy sings “There’s a Christmas party at the home of Farmer Gray…”
Something about the way he sings “Farmer” that just sticks with me, as if the director told him to over-perform it as much as possible. It must have required 50 or 60 takes before he got it just right.
I would love to know that guy’s name, so I can look him up and buy him a beer. I’m sure he is (or was - he’d be pushing 80 if he were still alive) one of hundreds of anonymous background musicians working in the industry, and he probably got paid scale for his work on that song - likely fifty bucks or so. But damn, the way he delivers that line…
I feel the same way about “Sleigh Ride.” First off, I fucking *hate *snow, not despite my background (Minnesota and other subarctic environs) but because of it. Second, no friends of mine would be douchebags who stand around outside in the middle of winter going “Yoo-hoo!” Third, every time I hear that whip I have visions of an entirely different sort. Fourth, I don’t want to hear fucking sleighbells “ring-ting-tingling too.” Neither do I want to hear a fucking horse being told to “Giddy up, giddy up, let’s go!” I especially don’t want to hear “Let’s look at the show, we’re riding through a wonderland of snow!” I don’t want to look at any fucking show whose main feature is something that can suck the life out of you in thirty minutes flat. :mad:
Pumpkin pie is part of Christmas in Pennsylvania, at least - a man from Tennessee has to go there to get some. He may not find any, though, since the Pennsylvanians are all traveling to Dixie’s sunny shore.
Heh. Our church includes it every year, and every year the congregation stumbles over what syllables to put when and regains control in time for “begotten, not created”.
My biggest problem with that song is the line “Christmas comes this time each year.” Which might be the worst lyric in any song ever. What, like I forgot and thought Christmas was in October?
