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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1713 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025

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Christmas songs thread

We're quickly approaching the end of the period of the year in which Christmas songs are an omnipresent aural nuisance, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity for us to talk about our favourite and least favourite songs in that genre. I am here defining a Christmas song as an original composition in the pop genre created for commercial reasons, and hence excluding all carols and traditional tunes.

Favourite Christmas songs

  1. "The Christmas Song" — Nat King Cole: An obvious choice perhaps, but it occurred to me this year that there is literally no other Christmas song I prefer. Cole may have had the single most beautiful male singing voice in the history of pop music: I found myself tearing up in the office a little bit, not because this song is sad, but simply for how remarkably rich and sonorous the timbre of his voice is. The chord progressions and instrumental arrangement still sound fresh and unexpected eighty years later, and the production is warm and intimate. It's amazing to me that this song may well have seen more airplay than all of the other entries on both lists combined (definitely if you count all of its innumerable cover versions), and yet it still doesn't feel "overexposed" to me.
  2. "The Power of Love" — Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Widely considered a Christmas song even though the lyrics don't refer to the holiday even indirectly, its cover artwork and music video nevertheless had a strong Nativity theme. An arrangement and vocal performance so striking and forceful that it completely overpowered the act's original camp ironic intent — listening to it, it's almost impossible to believe it's from the same album as "Relax" (also a great song in its own way).
  3. "Fairytale of New York" — The Pogues: This long occupied my #1 spot, which probably had more to do with a sense of misplaced nationalism than anything else. But in spite of that, I cannot deny how stirring I find the traditional arrangement, MacGowan's limitations as a vocalist are well-compensated for by the duet format with MacColl (all the more haunting now that both singers have left us), and the nostalgic-yet-venomous lyrics make it easily the most bittersweet Christmas song ever composed.
  4. "Driving Home for Christmas" — Chris Rea: Charming and jaunty, with a wonderfully grizzled vocal from Rea.
  5. "All I Want for Christmas is You" — Mariah Carey: I don't care if it's overplayed: Carey's vocal performance is a staggering accomplishment, the composition and arrangement sound timeless (it's no accident that "who originally sang AIWFCIY" is a common Google search: it does legitimately sound like a song first composed in the 60s and given a fresh arrangement by Carey in the 90s, and I mean that as a compliment), and it's aged far better than most Christmas songs (hell, most songs) from the era of its first release. Carey's retirement plan was well-earned.

Honorable mentions: "Santa Tell Me" by Ariana Grande, "Snowman" by Sia, the only decent original Christmas songs composed in the last thirty years.

Least favourite Christmas songs

An effective punchline would just be for to me to write "1. All the other ones", but that's not in keeping with the spirit of this space, so to be more specific:

  1. "Merry Xmas Everybody" — Slade: This is what Hell sounds like to me. Tedious, monotonous arrangement; performances which are both boring and bored-sounding (as if the musicians can't believe they're debasing themselves by recording a Christmas song, and are just gritting their teeth and trying to get through it as quickly as possible); flat, muffled 70s production; a tiresome and not remotely catchy chorus which recurs a whopping six times, as if the band are hoping to beat you into submission through rote repetition alone. It's appropriate that this song is guaranteed to get played at every boring office Christmas party where no one really wants to be there and the cheap white wine isn't serving as an effective social lubricant, as it literally sounds like a boring office Christmas party. It occurred to me this year that I literally cannot think of any song where, if forced to choose between listening to this song and another song, I would pick "Merry Xmas Everybody": it is just that annoying. Any of the musical compositions released by Crazy Frog (who was literally designed to be annoying)? Yes. "Cotton Eye Joe"? by Rednex? Yes, in a heartbeat. Anything by Limp Bizkit or Nickelback? Easily. "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt? No question. "Zombie" by the Cranberries? Definitely. Anything by 100 gecs? No doubt. The only song which I might have to think about for a minute is "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes, and they'd probably still cinch it in the end. Seriously. Fuck this song.
  2. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" — Band Aid: Music criticism is a difficult discipline because it can be enormously challenging to convey in words why you find a particular melody annoying, why a synth tone gets on your nerves, what it means to say that a vocal performance sounds lifeless or that a mix sounds sterile. Faced with this obstacle, a lot of music critics retreat from music criticism and focus instead on lyrical criticism (which really has more in common with literary criticism), as it's much easier to convey in written words why you think a piece of text is badly written. It's striking how often lists of "worst pop songs ever" are really lists of perfectly adequate pop songs with bad (or "offensive") lyrics e.g. perennials like Paul Anka's "You're Having my Baby" or Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park" — I don't think anyone would argue that either song is especially obnoxious from a compositional or performance standpoint. An excessive focus among critics on lyrical quality over musical quality rather misunderstands the nature of the enjoyment the average listener gets from music: "great composition with mediocre lyrics" is probably the rule rather than the exception among beloved pop songs, and lyrics have to be really bad before they'll make me not want to listen to a well-composed, well-produced song (the only example which immediately springs to mind is "Hardly Getting Over It" by Hüsker Dü, which literally would have been better as an instrumental); conversely, I don't care how good your lyrics are if the composition sucks and the performances are annoying (i.e. Bob Dylan and 90% of post-punk music sucks). This is a very lengthy preamble to convey that, from a musical, compositional standpoint, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is actually fine: Phil Collins's drumming is solid, the synth tones haven't aged half as poorly as many from that era, the melody is legitimately catchy, and the dozen or more vocalists sound like they're giving it their all. But the lyrics are so obnoxious, smarmy and self-important that it's all for naught. There won't be snow in Ireland this Christmastime either — where's our charity single? I understand that Bob Geldof (who wrote the song alongside omnipresent 80s journeyman Midge Ure) rather regrets the song, although for my part I would still say it's one of the better-composed songs in his back catalogue, and doesn't sound half as dated or irritating as "Rat Trap" or "I Don't Like Mondays". But more than just the obnoxious lyrics, when listening to this song I can't help but think it might be indirectly responsible for the ensuing decades of pompous grandstanding from pop, rock and punk musicians. Every time a punk band has paused in between songs so the singer can deliver an impassioned but clumsy ten-minute speech about how Orang Man Bad, Save Teh Trees and Muh Free Palestine, they're channelling the holier-than-thou spirit of Band Aid, if unwittingly (even if they would profess to despise the song for its white saviour qualities).
  3. "Christmas Tree Farm" — Taylor Swift: This song was unavoidable on the radio last year, and I didn't know who it was by but found it enormously irritating. This year I Shazam'd it, discovered that it's by Swift and thought — well, that checks out. I have to admit, the Cult of Swift is one of the things I find most baffling and alienating about the modern era. I'll hear people gush about how memorable and timeless her songs are, and then I listen to them and they sound functionally indistinguishable from those of any other teenybopper (by popular consensus her artistic peak was "All Too Well", and to me that sounds like a Sixpence None the Richer cut that they left off the album for not meeting their rigorous quality control standards). I'll hear people talk about how her lyrics make her the spokesperson for an entire generation of Western women (hell, Western people) — and then I read them and they're just spiteful put-downs towards her contemporaries or an embarrassing list of groan-worthy penis puns. Far from "growing with her audience", Swift now seems even more spoiled and adolescent than she did when she actually was an adolescent. Who knew the weird horsey girl and the toothy-head giving (but I repeat myself) demographics wielded such power and influence?
  4. Anything by Michael Bublé: Mickey Bubbles: "As a self-confessed Christmas prostitute, I would like to release a Christmas song." Producer: "Okay cool, let's come up with a chord progression and a vocal melody." Bubbles: "No, I don't want to write a Christmas song — that would take too much effort. I just want to record a cover and release it." Producer: "Okay, why don't we do a straight cover of $ChristmasSong? After all, it has such a memorable melody and hook that it's been beloved by generations of Westerners. A cover version is sure to do numbers." Bubbles: "Awesome. But I want to put my own spin on it, so I'm going to alter the phrasing and introduce loads of completely unnecessary syncopation and flourishes until the original melody is barely recognisable." Producer: "... okay, I see where you're coming from. But the entire reason people liked the original is because of its memorable and instantly recognisable melody." Bubbles: "Yeah." Producer: "... and so if you release a cover that has the same lyrics as the original but the melody and phrasing are altered beyond recognition, people won't like it as much. In fact, they'll probably find it really annoying and distracting." Bubbles: "Yeah." Producer: "... and that would be bad." Bubbles: "Yeah."
  5. "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" — Bruce Springsteen: I needed something to round off the list, and it was either this or "A Spaceman Came Travelling" by Chris de Burgh: that one seems to have fallen out of favour quite a bit and I can only recall hearing it once this Christmas, whereas I heard "The Boss"'s (ugh) rendition of this classic several times a week since mid-November. Aside from Clarence Clemons's lively saxophone break, this isn't a patch on the Jackson Five version, and Springsteen's pre-song ad-libs to the audience and his backing band are impossibly grating and forced. The Cult of Springsteen isn't as hard to understand as the Cult of Dylan (unlike Bob Dylan, Springsteen can carry a tune, and I can't argue with the sheer majesty of "Born to Run"), but the more of his music I'm exposed to the more overrated I find him*, and many of his affectations seem just as contrived as those of, say, Bono. Even seeing him perform live didn't move the needle for me much (granted that seeing him perform when he's in his seventies is going to be a very different experience to seeing him perform as a younger man). Maybe I should listen to Nebraska from start to finish and it'll click for me.

Dishonorable mentions: "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" by Patsy & Elmo, "Stay Another Day" by East 17, "Run Rudolph Run" by Chuck Berry, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey.

*I understand why he objects to "Born in the USA" being played at Republican rallies by politicians who seem to have missed the point of the song; on the other hand, perhaps he should be grateful that the song is played in public at all because it fucking sucks, and the less said about "Dancing in the Dark" the better.

Not even an honorable mention for "Merry Xmas (War is Over)" in your least favorite list?

Even as a confirmed John Lennon hater (this article might as well have been written about me), I can't find it in my heart to get too up in arms about that one. It's inoffensive background music with a predictable melody and chord progression, and it seems that, for once, John was able to persuade Yoko not to do any atonal wailing and screeching atop it. Nowhere near as irritating as any of my least favourite Christmas songs, from a compositional, lyrical or sonic standpoint.

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