Tgirsch over at Lean Left has posted his personal list of the worst christmas Xmas songs ever. Normally, I’d stay away from the subject, because most of the songs don’t bother me, and because I think the idea of a guy singing “Santa Baby” is cool enough that I’m going download the Everclear version if I can find it.
However, there’s one song Tgirsch and I agree on, no question. It comes to mind because I just heard it over the radio at the Thai restaurant where we were having dinner.
THE WORST CHRISTMAS SONG OF ALL TIME:
1. The Christmas Shoes by NewSong: Egad, what a heavy-handed, depressing piece of shlock this is. If you haven’t heard it, it’s a song about a boy who’s scraping together money to buy a pretty pair of shoes for his mom, who’s dying. He wants to buy them because “I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight.” Oy. The only way to make the song even remotely tolerable is to do something Kevin found Googling up the song: Imagine the kid is a grifter, his mom is waiting in the car, and they’ve been pulling this scam at every store in town, with plans to return the shoes for cash two days after Christmas.
Exactly. I can’t get my head around what mom’s gonna do with the shoes if she’s laid up in the hospital. Wear ‘em in the hospital bed?
However, I will give credit where it’s due. This song deserves a place of honor in the hall of fame for manipulative song writing. Right next to “Butterfly Kisses.”
It’s got everything; a male singer who sounds vaguely strung out and with enough raspiness in his voice to qualify for emotion, a cute and somewhat pathetic little kid, a key change at the precise moment you expect it, a children’s chorus that kicks in just when you think things can get more schmaltzy, and finally a lone kid singing the last line which includes some thing about Jesus.
And it’s all wrapped around a chorus with a hook that will grab you and rip at your throat like nothing you’ve seen in any horror movie, so that you find yourself singing it to yourself without even meaning to, and leave you giving serious consideration to cutting your tongue out with a butter knife and possibly taking an icepick to your ear drums to ensure you never have to hear it again.
Ugh. Give me John Lennon’s “And so this is Christmas Xmas” any day. So, what are your favorites?
(And yeah, I changed the title to read “The Worst Holiday Songs Ever” instead of “The Worst Christmas Xmas Songs Ever.” Bill O’Reilly can just come and get me.)
The only Christmas song I *like* is Father Christmas by The Kinks.
There’s a song that’s played up here around this time, "Christmas in the Northwest". It’s got to be the most godawful piece of treacly crap ever produced. I only really heard it once and that was a thousand times too many. Now, just a couple of notes of it sends me screaming. The chorus:
Christmas in the NorthwestIs a gift that we can shareChristmas in the NorthwestIs a children’s answered prayerTake away the presents and you still will have a tree,For Christmas in the Northwest is a giftGod wrapped in green
Urrrghh. Vile.
As for good favorites, "Merry Christmas Baby" is my favorite song. Elvis, Etta, Lou Rawls, Otis Redding, Southern Culture on the Skids, the Four Tops, and the O’Jays all have versions that jingle my stocking cap. But then I’m especially partial to old soul and r&b. Speaking of which . . .
Soul Shower is putting up holiday-themed mp3′s until the 25th. Some good stuff so far.
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My favorite Holiday song is "5 pound box of money" by Pearl Bailey, great song and I never hear it enough. Others I hear too much.
I hate the shoes song. I do like the idea of the Kid being a grifter.
The song that makes me cringe the most is "Do you hear what I hear", but that is personal. They wouldn’t let me play the king in the christmas show at school (because I was a girl, and the boy who got it had a mother who did everything for the school and he wouldn’t even sing, just stood there like an idiot grinning and everyone had to sing his part.) but I’m not bitter.
I dunno. Has Ashcroft cut a Christmas CD yet?
First-time poster, long-time lurker here. Hi.
The worst Christmas song ever – and surely one of the contenders for worst song ever, period – has to be The Millennium Prayer by Cliff Richard. In case you are lucky enough never to have heard this piece of tat, it is the Lord’s Prayer sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. It has Cliff, which is bad enough, and also features a children’s choir. And it was released to "celebrate" the millennium, so it’s tacky and moneygrabbing too.
My vote for best Christmas song goes to A Gun For Christmas by the Vandals.
Wow, I feel so lucky. I don’t even know 3/4 of these songs. I avoid the radio in Dec and don’t go near a mall.
The only song I remember hateing when it came out is something called ‘Grandma got run over by a reindeer’ But I haven’t heard that in over 5 years.
T:
Drop me an e-mail, and I’ll tell you how to get the Everclear song. I’m pretty sure it’s on a Target holiday compilation my wife bought, but I have to look.
For what it’s worth, it’s bad for a lot more reasons than just a guy singing it.
It’s on Target’s "Sounds of the Season 98" CD. Track 4.
I agree with you on the worst ever. Butterknives and icepicks won’t solve the problem, either, if you’ve EVER heard the song. Somehow you’ll remember it and it’ll run through your head even without ears or a tongue. I say take off and nuke it from orbit–it’s the only way to be sure.
The ubiquity of Christmas brings out the rebel in me. I like Venus Envy’s "I"ll Be A Homo For Christmas", and I just ordered the Kinsey Sick’s album of "Christmas songs and other Jewish music", called Oy Vey In A Manger.
I’m another lurker here.
One of my favorite Christmas songs is Weird Al’s "Christmas at Ground Zero." A couple of years ago I would play the song for anyone who happened to come to my place. I drove my roommate nuts with it. It was a blast.
Terrance, if you have to have an Everclear Christmas song, go with "I Will Be Hating You For Christmas".
Chris T:
Nice Aliens reference.
Shannon:
If you like that one, you should also check out The Night Santa Went Crazy, off Al’s "Bad Hair Day" CD. Christmas at Ground Zero is actually an older tune, dating all the way back to 1990. If you get to see the video for that one, it’s great. It’s got a lot of old stock "civil defense" footage.
The perfect antidote to all this Xmas rubbish is SILENT NIGHT by Mahalia Jackson.
I Even play this one on New Year’s Eve..
Listen to it….
OK. I’ll be the Scrooge. I hate "White Christmas". Maybe it’s because of my age. But every time I hear Bing Crosby sing that song, I think of the Klan.
I am apparently not the only one who thinks that way. Flyers were stuffed into employee mailboxes of a major Southern utility showing a cartoon Klansman singing the song.
I’m starting to think this has the makings of a playlist for the iPod. I create weird playlists like this; most recently one called "Sad Songs."
The first time I heard "The Christmas Shoes" I thought it was a joke song, like the Grandma and the Reindeer song. The next time I heard it, I listened carefully to the lyrics only to realize, to my horror, that it was completely serious. To try and buy a pair of shoes for your dying mother — seriously, would that be what she wants in the end? By the third time I heard it — they play it on Sirius every hour practically — I was forced to flip the radio back to the disco station. It is an abomination…and when the choir vocale comes in towards the middle — "The Christmas Shoooooooooooeeeeeeeessssssss" — you realize that there is no God.
Scott-o-Rama concurs:
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what the hell is wrong with all of you? christmas shoes is not a sappy pathetic song and you may feel sorry for me because i love it but i feel sorry for YOU if u dont. This song shows the nieve and pleasing traits of a young boy who wants nothing more that for his mother to be the beautiful woman that he wants to remember..call me a fuckin sap but im not even religious and this song pulls at the strings tugging on my heart. get some goddamn feeling scrooge.
The chirstmas shoes was the saddies song I have ever hurred I was riding along with my mom in her car and we heard the song and we started crying and I now know that I am going to apperate christmas alot more with my mom there.
you guys are gay this song is the best christmas song ever and i will listen to it one hundred times over.
P.S. GOd loves you all