I’ve never been clear on why (some) people loathe either song, frankly.
My least-favorite Christmas song is “The Holiday Season” – “Whoop dee doo and dickory dock, and don’t forget to hang up your sock!” – because it’s corny and contrived. I’m totally okay with Bing and Bowie singing about peace on earth and love.
Ref Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmas Time, I am always compelled to post this in response (probably the third or fourth time I’ve posted it here). It takes McCartney’s cheesy bouncy pap and turns it into something, well, wonderful.
I wondered the same - how one ‘remasters’ old video to 4K when the lines, bits or pixels aren’t there to start with, but you must be right: it’s film, of course.
That’s a god damn awesome album - still.Think I’ll play it right now.
@anon50609448 - didn’t we already have this discussion?
Oh well. Here’s an entry that ticks off most of my boxes for worst Xmas song ever. It’s no Wonderful Christmastime, but that’s because Wonderful Christmastime is the uncut, pure evil, like the black goo that drips out of Gary Oldman’s head in The Fifth Element. Nothing can compete with that kind of purity.
Oh holy crap! The Christmas Shoes! Nooooooooooo!
Got it in one. The “classic” LDB always gets slowed down to a dirgelike pace, prolonging the agony. But Bowie’s counterpoint(?) complements Crosby so well, it uplifts the song from terrible, through tolerable, and into inspired.
Every instrumental track on the Peanuts album is gold, and “My Little Drum” is, at best, LDB-adjacent. Jazzy and uptempo is best for this song. It’s about a kid and a drum! Play it like you enjoy it!
I don’t know, “Last Christmas” sounds awfully topical for the UK now.
Last Christmas I remember from the original Very Special Christmas album, a perfect time capsule of mid 80s popcheese, that only ripens as the years pass. I still bounce along to the Eurythmics track on that one. And yes, it contains the dreaded LDB, and yes, I skip it. Sorry, Bob Seger.
Honestly, there’s tolerable versions of both out there. Neither is lyrical gold. But being a popcheese child of the 80s, I can handle the doofy synth stylings of Wham! In a nostalgic, ironic way. The full choral version of LDB mistakes “slow tempo” for “meaningful art,” and at the first, oh-so-serious “barummm… barummm…” I’m clawing my ears off. Just awful.
Maybe not the worst, but possibly the freakiest video. Although maybe Shakin’ Steven’s has the worst Christmas video.
Don’t think so, and I just played the original VSC last week. By the time of the album’s 1987 release, Wham was history.
Yeah, agreed, it’s the glorious 80s that we can remember without having to relive.
I Wham! corrected! All the aural cheese melts together after a few decades.
Did the lost decade produce any Christmas songs?
I love this one. Makes me cry every time.
Tim Minchin’s “White Wine in the Sun”
Nearly…
Even that one.
The Hoodoo Gurus do the only acceptable version.
I meant more the “choral” vs. the Bing/Bowie versions of Little Drummer Boy, both of which I am totally okay with (likely from having sung it in chorus a lot) and my ears remain happily un-clawed.
But also, here’s my favorite version:
I feel sorry for all of the people clawing their eyes and ears out from Christmas jingles, yikes.
