I’ve wanted to break radio stations because of this song.
I take it all back. My Secret Santa at work got me The John Waters Christmas. I haven’t had time to play it yet, but I’m guessing there isn’t a bad song on it. 
I don’t mind the song (it’s Wham!–you can’t really expect much), but I wonder about it’s placement in the Christmas song line-up, too. My thought is that, because of the recent and popular advent of 24-hour Christmas song stations (lasting from Thanksgiving to Christmas), they’re desperate to play anything that even remotely mentions Christmas. Kansas City has two such stations and they divide up that song between the two of them: one gets the Wham! version, and the other gets the, er… remake (sung by whomever needed a quick quasi-hit).
Same goes with Dan Folgelberg’s * Same Old Lang Syne*. It mentions Christmas Eve in the first three lines, but the song has nothing to do with Christmas. Yet, it’s in the line-up.
I don’t think I have ever been consciously aware that this was Paul McCartney until I read this post. Because I hate this song. It sounds like the epitome of a kind of awful choral arrangement created by a music teacher in a junior high school. And I certainly wouldn’t want to hear a group of kids sing it either.
Meanwhile I have also always hated “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” just for the whole point of the question. Yes, everyone alive on the entire planet celebrates Christmas, obviously, especially people in Africa.
And anything at all by that Manhattan Steamroller new age group thingy, whatever they’re called. Ugh. Those people get their own level in Hell when they die.
Darren Hayes, the former lead singer of Savage Garden.
koeeoaddi, supervenusfreak bought that John Waters Christmas thing for me for Christmas. I haven’t gotten it yet, but he had to make fun of my taste in music and tell me he got me the tackiest Christmas album ever!
Slams on headphones, cranks up the Dolchamar:
Sed mi…
Ne volas dormi
Ne volas cedi
feliz navidad
Ne volas kashi
feliz navidad
Ne volas kredi
feliz navidad
Mi volas tushi
Prospero año y Felicidad
Mi volas kushi
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
Mi volas vidi
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
Mi volas vivi
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas,
From the bottom of my heart
ARRRGGHHH!!!
Curse you, BabaBooey! You made me look up the lyrics, and now I’m doomed! Doomed, I say!
“I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” I used to love that song, but here in the greater Philly listening area we have not one, but TWO, 24-hour-kill-all-your-brain-cells-all-Christmas-all-the-barking-time! stations, and one of them is apparently required by Pennsylvania state law or something to play “Hippo” once every 90 minutes. I can’t take it any more!
I also hate that “Christmas Shoes” song, and “Mary, Did You Know?” They both make me want to give myself an appendectomy with a spoon.
On the upside, I have the old Sesame Street Christmas album, and it has “(All I Want for Christmas Is) My Two Front Teeth” sung by The Count, and it never ceases to amuse me. “Nine 'merry’s, one ‘Christmas,’ and two teeth!” Redeeming the irredeemable.
I’m going to have to say “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” by John & Yuko. Her voice makes me want to pike myself in the eye with a hot needle.
A second is “Don’t They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid
Many Christmas carols are improved by slight changes in the lyrics. For example, the chorus to “Winter Wonderland” works much better if you sing the Hare Krishna chant to it:
Hare haaaare, krishna krishna
Rama raaaaama, krishna krishna
A-hare hare, rama rama
Hare krishna winter wonderland.
“Ring Christmas Bells” works well if you replace the title line with “Apocalypse,” the “Dum dum dum dum dum dum” bit with “Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb”; another place in the song works as “radi radi radi radi radi radiation,” and the long notes fit with a drawn out “Nuuuuucleeeeeeear Winnnnnnnterrrrrrrrr.”
And I’ve done and forgotten a rewrite of “The Little Gunner Boy,” in which the Four Horseman have ridden to meet the antichrist when a little child steps forth and declares his lack of suffering to give his king, but all he has is a gun: “Shall I slay for you, Lord Armageddon? Me and my gun.”
Rewriting Christmas carols is a hobby.
Daniel
Ugh, I just heard “Please Christmas Don’t be Late” by Alvin & The Chipmunks.
Curse my wife, and her finding of the 24 hour satellite Christmas station!!
What could be wrong with “Me, I want a hula hoop…”
I’ll tell you what makes me puke: Neil Diamond’s version of Little Drummer Boy which is done in the inimitable style of Mr. Diamond - shouted at the top of his lungs.
Carol of the Bells makes me want to stab someone repeatedly in the face.
[Black Mage]Play it and become painfully familiar with stabbity death.[/Black Mage]
There are others, but most have already been mentioned.
And what’s up with My Favorite Things as a Christmas song?
It was from The Sound of Music and had nothing whatsoever to do with the holiday season. The kids were frightened because of a thunderstorm and perky Julie Andrews told them to think of their favorite things - then sang the freakin’ song.
You can blame either Diana Ross and the Supremes (who performed it on a Motown Christmas album) or Barbra Streisand (who performed it on A Christmas Album) for this particular travesty. I agree with you on this one: if “My Favorite Things” is a Christmas song, then so is Pearl Jam’s “Wishlist.”
All the way. It’s the one that came to mind immediately- totally vapid but not in a fun La Vida Loca way. It sounds like something Desi Arnaz would have sung half of before Lucy walked in wearing a fake beard and earlocks trying to convince him she was a singing rabbi.
It just gets worse.
Today, I was at the Hudson’s Bay Centre, a mall built over a major subway station in Toronto. There was no music, or any other sound, being played on the ceiling speakers. Was it audio bliss? Was it?
Nope. I had my own personal audio hallucination going. It was apparently running in sixteen-track Dolby stereo surround sound, and it was filling my head with “Winter Wonderland”, complete with vapid crooning and lame horse-clop effects:
“Giddyap giddyap giddyap let’s go/
Let’s go to the snow/
Let’s trravel through a wonderland of love”
Of course the lyrics were a bit off…
In my capacity as a geezer I’ve been listening to novelty Christmas songs and Tin Pan Alley holiday music since the first Truman Administration. My vote on this is The Little Drummer Boy in any version by any artist on any instrument. Rum-a-dum-dum? Here’s your Rum-a-dum-dum, pal.
My father had a visceral hatred for I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. In the Fall of 1942 he had spent three weeks on the docks at Newport News waiting to board a troopship for the invasion of North Africa. Bing Crosby’s ode to a secular holiday was played over and over and over on the PA systems in the bivouacs, on the docks and on the ship for the whole time. The Old Man was a good hater and the song, Crosby, and by association Bob Hope, were on his short list for the rest of his life.
Barbra Streisand sings a version of Jingle Bells that makes me want to scream. First off, I don’t like Barbra, and secondly, she sings this song like she had drunk eight cups of coffee and had to record the song before she could go pee. I don’t understand the motivation behind singing this song like she’s on crack. It’s so freaking fast I’m stunned.
FWIW, I love Carol of the Bells (especially the a capella version) * Do You Hear What I Hear*, and anything by Manheim Steamroller. So there. 
Someone has a remake of Christmas Time is Here Again, famous from the Charlie Brown / Peanuts Xmas program.
Instead of doing it properly, with all the musical intricacies that make it interesting, they smooshed it into a normal key and took all the life out of it.
Don’t they have snow in Tacoma, Washington?