One of the good things about working the xmas season at Macy’s is the discount. One of the REALLY REALLY BAD THINGS is the xmas music loop. I don’t much like any of it, and yet, I hear it all 10 times a day!
I’ve noticed (oh god, have I noticed) that they tend to alternate a holiday song with a merely seasonal song (Winter Wonderland, not xmas; I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus [barf, xmas]; Baby It’s Cold Outside, not xmas. This serves only to sully ALL of them.
When it’s busy I don’t notice. Late at night, when I’m tired, it makes me want to cut off my ears.
Yeah, I don’t like that depressing Lennon song, and how come he never got nailed for stealing the melody from “Stewball”? I want to sue him posthumously.
But the one song I would get rid of forever is “It’s the Most Wonderful Time.” Right. It’s cold, it’s dark, people are depressed, they’re spending money they don’t have and stressed out and broke and have to shovel their driveways and be careful not to slip on the ice. Yeah. Great time of year.
Just for that fucking synthesizer. The story goes he just got it, and basically locked himself in a studio with that synth and big bag of weed. Wonderful Christmastime was the result.
For some reason the mental image of that made me laugh out loud. I think Rolling Stone said it best when it critiqued Ebony and Ivory: “now that we all know that McCartney is suffering from irreversible brain damage…”
A few years ago, The Today Show had some (famous NYC) lounge singers doing this duet around Christmas and it was a disaster - I am sure they sounded good around the piano at midnight after a few drinks, but trust me when I say that at 7:45 AM they were not in good form. They were really off key and out of sync, very badly! The look on faces of Matt, Katie and Al after the song spoke volumes.
BTW, I am surprised no one has yet mentioned one of the worst Christmas songs:
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.
Yes, anyone with a brain knows that Mom & Dad were probably doing in some kinky role-playing make-out session, but this kid actually thinks Mom is cheating on Dad with the Personification of Christmas Itself- and his response? “What a laugh it would have been, if Daddy had only seen…” Do you WANT your parents to split up, Kid? Heck, in one version, the kid makes non-sung comments and one is “I did see Mommy kissing Santa Claus and I’m gonna tell my Dad!” Doggam little snitch!
But not the Bing Crosby/David Bowie version. I wouldn’t want to have Christmas if that acid-trip-inspired duet ceased to exist. Had I been old enough to have an opinion of it at the time, i surely would have predicted a Star Wars Holiday Special-like disaster. Instead, it was an instant classic, an improbable duo thrown together to make something oddly beautiful.
Bowie/Crosby
I’ll nominate the 12 Days of Christmas.
ETA: In all it’s incarnations, even Bob & Doug McKenzie’s version, even the Muppet’s version.
Back to school time IS the most wonderful time of the year! For weary parents, anyway - you can see it in their eyes, a gleam of hope. There’s a spring in their steps. the summer heat is abating, and daytime freedom beckons. ITMWTOTY is a late summer anthem, and shouldn’t be played during f’ing Christmas.
Word. That old chestnut’s got more than 20 years on it eh?
But if I had to push just one song off the island, I have to go with GEORGE MICHAEL’S effing LAST CHRISTMAS slop. OMG! It’s like a goddam mummy, getting dragged on out every damn year! Isn’t usually paired with some horrid Mariah Carey song from the 80s too? GAW!
I feel for any of you working in Malls or such where you can’t get away from the Xmas songs. I like them and see most of them have been mentioned already. But I only listen to them for a day or two each season right at Christmas. Someone mentioned on this board a couple years back that if Christmas songs were actually good songs, they would be played all year long.
I have mixed feelings about that one. On the one hand, the melody’s great, and the later verses are somewhat deep, if you listen to them. On the other hand, though, that song is probably the single biggest factor perpetuating the misconception that the magi were kings. As a magus myself, I find that offensive. Call them magi, call them astrologers or astronomers (at the time, there wasn’t much difference), call them wise men, call them Zoroastrian scholars, whatever, just don’t call them kings.