The 10 Worst (Yet Still Popular) Christmas Songs
Grab the aspirin and anti-nausea medicine
They’re awful. They’re popular. They’re back.
Behold my list of the worst Christmas music we’re all forced to endure every December. But what makes my list of worst Christmas songs unique?
The train wrecks on my list are songs you know—songs you grew up listening to and can’t avoid hearing between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Most articles on the internet promising their list of worst Christmas songs, include songs you’ll never hear in the mall—songs so incredibly obscure you’ve likely never heard them before. Songs like the Cheeky Girls’ Have a Cheeky Christmas, John Denver’s Please Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas, and Tiny Tim’s Santa Clause Got The AIDS This Year.
Besides excluding these (and other) outlandish songs, my list also doesn’t contain wanna-be Christmas songs like Wham’s Last Christmas that’s more about a broken relationship than Christmas, or the song Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses that’s less about Christmas and more about a year-long inability to coordinate a date until the two run into each other at a grocery store buying cranberries. Seriously.
Instead, I’ve chosen to stick to the worst of the popular Christmas songs—the songs that are played on the radio (over and over and over) every year at this time.
Oh, and one other thing, the songs on my list are so bad, even Paul McCartney’s universally hated Wonderful Christmastime didn’t make the cut. That’s right; there are at least ten songs worse than Wonderful Christmastime. (By the way, as bad as that song is, you have to admit, once you hear it you can’t get that tune out of your head.)
So, without further ado, here is my personal list of the 10 Worst (Yet Still Popular) Christmas Songs.
Dishonorable Mention: GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER
A favorite of all kids in the 80s . . . where it should have stayed (like heavy metal, the Rubik’s Cube, and parachute pants).
10. ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH
A cute song for kids, but if you’re reading this, chances are you’re not a kid anymore and you’re tired of hearing it. Just like that time many years ago when you retired your GI Joes or Barbies, it’s time to retire this song.
9. ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU
The staple of easy listening pop music stations found on the higher end of your FM radio dial, this song by Mariah Carey is simply played out and annoying. Whenever it comes on I can’t turn it off—or run out of the area—fast enough.
8. BLUE CHRISTMAS
Sorry Elvis fans, but when a better rendition of this song is the one performed by Porky Pig, you know you have a loser on your hands.
7. MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY
Originally performed by Otis Redding, this bad song found its ultimate demise when someone, somewhere suggested this piece of music couldn’t get any worse. That’s when Bruce Springsteen stood up and said, “Hold my egg nog.”
But Mr. Springsteen wasn’t content with turning just one Christmas song from bad to worse; he also holds the number three spot on this list as well (as you’ll see below).
6. I SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUS
Intended to be cute, this song is just plain annoying. Maximum amount of times the average human can endure listening to it in their lifetime before wanting to jump off a cliff: 5. I exceeded that limit a long, long time ago.
5. SANTA BABY
This song has cost me a lot of money in shirts because whenever I hear it, blood begins pouring from my ears getting all over my clothes. Conclusion: this quasi-seductive tripe with its whiney vocals masquerading as a Christmas song needs to go away. Far away.
4. LITTLE SAINT NICK
Maybe it’s because the whole Beach Boys motif (with its sand, surfboards, and sunburns) is the complete antithesis of the Christmas motif (with its snow, fireplaces, and hot chocolate), or maybe it’s because the Beach Boys sound just gives me flu-like symptoms. Either way, listening to this song makes me nauseous.
3. SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN (Springsteen version)
Only Bruce Springsteen could take a seemingly innocuous song like this, and make you feel like you’ve stumbled into karaoke night at a trailer park laundromat on the outskirts of the bad part of town.
2. JINGLE BELL ROCK
Clearly the lowest point in Hall and Oates’ musical career (and everyone else who’s performed this dumpster fire). From the opening riff to the final pluck of the guitar string, this song compels me to drive icepicks deep into my ears to numb the pain.
1. ROCKIN’ AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE
This musical train wreck takes the crown as my most hated Christmas song. Actually, hate is too kind of a word to describe how I feel about it.
I loathe this steaming pile of hot garbage so much, I’ve devoted the rest of my life to building a time machine so I can travel back to 1958 to stop Brenda Lee from recording it (kind of like that Terminator and Sarah Connor thing).
J.L. Pattison is the author of four contemporary speculative fiction books, earning him two awards and garnering favorable comparisons to Rod Serling, M. Night Shyamalan, and Ray Bradbury. He also writes for such publications as Liberation Day, Predict, Koinonia, The Startup, The Writing Cooperative, and The Writer’s Sanctuary. His articles have been featured at Mere Liberty and on Wretched TV. When not writing, he can be found in his garage working on his time machine to save the world from bad Christmas songs.
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