Giving it another try. Vote for additional songs in the comments.
0 voters
@MonkeyPretzel This is the first time I’ve heard Billy’s Christmas Wish. That may be the most miserable Christmas music experience I’ve ever had. Merry Christmas, indeed.
Jeez, I’d forgotten all about Brucie’s butchering of what’s otherwise a pretty innocuous ditty. So, thanks… I think. 
(Sleigh Ride is still awful, though.)
Entirely for the potentially “rapey” subtext going on here. I know it isn’t the songs intention, but every time I hear it I do cringe a bit.
I like three of the songs on that list… including, incredibly, the Mariah Carey one. It’s literally the only song of hers I like, because it reminds me of a 60’s girl group tune. This does not include the one with Bieber. (I also like Sleigh Ride and Do They Know It’s Christmas.)
I gave a pass to ones I hate because they’re overplayed and not because they’re terribly bad songs… which is why I didn’t vote for the Lennon.
I voted for the Spike Jones one. Really awful.
Dishonorable mention to Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, which has the distinction of being both bad and overplayed.
The Mariah Carey one has been horribly overplayed, everywhere you go. When it first came out, it was a refreshingly old-school Christmas pop song.
That really, really isn’t what the song is about. The woman in the song wants to stay, but she’s worried about her image and propriety, which used to be a thing. That’s the only thing going on.
You can see this in my favorite version of the song, done by Sigourney Weaver and David Johansen on Saturday Night Live.
You missed the worst, most manipulative, saccharine, annoying and irritatingly sappy Christmas song ever written.
Christmas Shoes.
It is so obviously trying to make you think it’s sweet, I hate it with a deep burning passion. I can’t figure out why my reaction is so vehement, but I absolutely hate it.
I voted for the Mariah Carey one for a personal reason. When the song came out, I was working at a video arcade and we had a tape loop that played on overhead TVs that would last a month. Unfortunately that tape was 1 hour long. And even if I didn’t watch it, which I usually didn’t, I had to hear it. In December, one of the things on the tape loop was the video for All I Want For Christmas Is You.
I had to listen to that song once an hour for what I just calculated was a total of 6 2/3 days. And I didn’t really like it to begin with.
Yes! There’s no subtext at all and quite frankly, it shocked me that people decided that was the message of the song. It boggles my mind.
The “say, what’s in this drink” line is the line I think a lot of people have a problem with. It’s implying he might be drugging her.
I understand your point, but that used to mean “how strong is this drink?”
It helps to hear the lyrics in the context of the 1940s, which a lot of people today are unable or unwilling to do.
It’s only in people’s more twisted minds today that it means that it’s drugged.
That’s the one I voted for - “Wonderful Christmastime”. Vacuous and terrible.
Paul wrote some excellent songs, but if you want to see a takedown of Paul at his most empty-headed, there’s a scene in the Rutles movie where the Paul-type character in the Rutles (played by Eric Idle) is composing a song at the piano, with Bianca Jagger as his wife. It’s a great scene.
Yeah, that’s part of it. Also just the message in general that if your partner’s uncomfortable with something you should just keep wearing on them until they give in.
I think the first time I heard this song was on The Muppet Show, where Miss Piggy is singing it to Rudolph Nureyev. So I guess the message there was that if an “ugly” woman hits on a handsome man, he’ll understandably do anything to get away. [sigh] Getting old and cynical about life ruins everything.
“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has to be the worst. The lyrics are so ethnocentric and ignorant. It has such a “We must convert the heathen savages” vibe.
Baby It’s Cold Outside isn’t really a Christmas song anyway. It’s just that every song about snow, cold, etc. gets shanghaied as a holiday song. That, Winter Wonderland, Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells, I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, O Tannenbaum…
Brace yourselves for the worst Canadian reggae until Informer by Snow.
Exactly. Yet, songs about summer don’t automatically get connected to a holiday. It doesn’t seem right somehow.