Brave Combo did a version of that song with all the parum-pum’s taken out. Just the instrumentals humming in their place. Ultimately, it managed to be even more annoying because of the implied parum-pum’s.
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Here here!
What I don’t understand is why it sounds so sad. The war is over and it’s Christmas! Why so glum?
(you might be able to reach a happy place if you imagine the caterwaulers to be the chaps from Monty Python)
Along the same lines, to me the worst part of Last Christmas itself is the incongruity of the lyrics and the glee with which they are sung. I find this version, by Erlend Oye, to be much more appropriately depressing in tone.
Here’s a great CBC podcast about Christmas music and why it is so terrible:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/ID/2641852147/
For some reason I can’t remember, Now That’s What I Call Music’s Christmas album became a traditional tape to get played while driving down to Penzance for our summer holidays with the grandparents (a 6-7 hour drive). We listened to all these songs over and over again every summer. I don’t know how my parents didn’t go mad.
Happy Holidays…Happy Holidays…hate to trash Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby, but this song is bad.
It’s the WOOOORST.
Technically not a Christmas song at all, but it was on the seasonal playlist. The worst I ever heard was a long syrupy version of Danny Boy played while I was trapped on a checkout line. Almost wanted to claw my ears out. It made the hundredth mall version of “Deck the Halls” in a row almost tolerable in comparison.
woof woof woof,
woof woof woof.
woof woof, woof woof bark.
you sure grandma stands against the dogs?
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Baby it’s Cold Outside - Otherwise known in my circle of friends as “That Date Rape Song” (“What’s in this drink?”)
Last Christmas - I despise this song and its utterly generic, static, humdrum sound.
Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime - It feels like this is what Paul McCartney wrote down for a brainstorming session on writing an XMas tune. Then, upon coming up with zero ideas, decided to use his lame brainstorming kernel as the actual hook. Ugh.
Santa Baby - Gross. Just. Gross.
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aaaahhhhahahahah
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Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, hands down.
Purely musically, it’s far from the worst of the pack; but what a tale…
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Deformed freak-reindeer gets relentlessly excluded and harassed for no good reason. Santa apparently doesn’t give a damn and all the other reindeer are in on it and having a grand old time.
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One christmas, conditions are atypical, and it turns out that that the freak just might have his uses. “Hey, you, yeah, you, the deformed one! Get over here, I’ve got a shit job that your freakery is perfect for.”
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All the reindeer, apparently sycophantic assholes to a man, begin toadying.
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Apparently everything is now OK, past cruelty conveniently elided, and Rudolf (for some inexplicable reason) doesn’t tell the rest of them to fuck off, experience controlled flight into terrain, and resort to cannibalism as they starve to death on some godforsaken mountaintop.
What the hell kind of moral of the story is that? (Aside from probably more accurate than one would like…)
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The only version I actually like anymore is the one by The Hoodoo Gurus and cause they lay on the psychedelic layers and no vocals at all and turn it into something new and interesting. Happily I can say that so far this holiday season I have not heard LDB while out shopping.
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I have a special, white-hot hatred for “Santa Baby”. I worked at a Media Play (remember those?) during Christmas, in the CD department. They had the same five Christmas CDs in rotation all day long. I could tune out most of the songs, but “Santa Baby” penetrated my skull like brain cancer. I had to listen to that idiotic “dumb-girl from the 1940s”-accent like ten times a day. Ugh. Ugh. Make it stop.
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I’m not sure how this is even possible, but I don’t remember hearing that song at all when it was first released. I don’t think I first heard it until 4 or 5 years ago, and I remember thinking “Wham made a Christmas song?”
I’m very surprised that no one else has mentioned any of the numerous Christmas tunes by Mannheim Steamroller. I actually like it (weird nostalgia if nothing else) but I also realize that I’m probably in a very tiny minority here.
You’re welcome!
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Good calls. I fail to find the cuteness in baby it’s cold outside also. For the same reasons.
Apart from anything else the drums on last Christmas are like water torture for my ears, I wait for the “human sounding” offbeat interventions with dread.
I wonder if this is generational, because I love the song, although it still breaks me every time I hear it. I like the sentiment expressed, but for me, it recalls the days immediately after Lennon was shot, when it was in the Christmas rotation… a lot.
Do you hear what I hear
Do you smell what I smell
A little more to add, in addition to my mention of The Christmas Shoes above, which wins for me probably only because I was managing a retail store the christmas that it came out so I got to hear it five or six times a day for a month, here are a couple of other mentions:
Faith of our Fathers - Not really a christmas song so much as a christian song but on White Christmas by Bing Crosby which gets played in my home. Literally contains a line hoping that our children are tortured to death for the glory of god. I am not joking, look up the lyrics.
Funky Funky Christmas (New Kids on the Block) - If you want to hear the actual worst christmas song, a christmas song so bad that it can’t get play on radios at christmas time, this is it. This is the Manos: The Hands of Fate of christmas songs. It is so bad that it is beneath you to dislike it, and there is no point in even comparing.
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I remember that, I thought Letterman was just making a joke…
However – whether it really can be classified as a “Christmas song”, I still love Rudolph’s and Herbie’s “We’re a Couple of Misfits”.
