If you are allowed to have one guilty pleasure in life, mine is bad Christmas songs.
I love you, Bing Crosby, and I love every one of your Christmas songs, but sometimes I just need to include a bit of rap and techno beatz to my celebrations. You understand, don’t you? (no, I wouldn’t understand either…)
I’ll be the first one to say that these covers are TERRIBLE. Absolutely the most horrible, out of line, Christmas songs ever produced. And I love them.
So here you go, the worst of the worst, which to me, equals the best.
1. All I want for Christmas is you
Mariah Carey sings this, but in my mind, all I can see is this girl I used to work with, Kelly, singing into a doll hairbrush, and another coworker, Elise, raising her eyebrows. Not that Kelly was a bad singer. In fact, I was very, very, amused. Being a lowly freshman in high school, the actions of seniors were all very new and wonderful to me. Now, as a freshman in college, I can still say that this song is a never-ending amusement and a wonderful way for me to express my feelings, as I serenade my bored roommate while she tries to recuperate after finishing her Math final… (good job Erin!)
2. Last Christmas
The lyrics for this song are so brilliant… “Last Christmas I gave you my heart and the very next day, you gave it away… this year to save me from tears, ill give it to someone special…”
First of all, I’m so sorry for you WHAM! that you would trust someone with your entire heart… but ever try being an independent and living for yourself? No? I think you will find that it will “save you from tears” and maybe you can find out that you don’t need someone else to make you happy, that you can find joy in your family and friends without any “romance” or any of that crap. Trust me WHAM!, its overrated.
Last Christmas for me was spent creating a Max suit from Where the Wild Things Are, and when I gave it to my ex-boyfriend, what did he say? Thank you? Nah, rather, “you should have left holes for shoes.” Well, I think I redefined “special” for you WHAM!, so stick that in your complaining pipe and smoke it.
The best moments of Christmas is shared with people who you can be yourself with. (cheesy? Yeah, but its Christmas, so cut me a break.)
Also, I wish the scanner was working so that I could provide an original example of why I love this song so much… in the most recent letter that I got from Christine, she drew me a picture of her being shunned by her roomie because she has no Christmas decorations on her side of the dorm. And in a little speech bubble, it says “I HATE CHRISTMAS (except for last Christmas)” It made me laugh all the way down campus walk, making me a victim of suspicious stares.
3. Christmas shoes
I remember hearing this song for the first time… I was moved. Deeply. And then my dad heard it. And all sympathy for the little boy who wants to buy shoes for his dying mom was forgotten.
Excuse my feminist point of view, and I know that this is the most nit-picky thing to pull out of this song, but really? I sincerely hope Jesus doesn’t care about shoes and whether dying women look beautiful. Is our Lord and Savior that shallow? I sure hope not. And if I was a dying mama, I would rather have my son, whose name would be George Harrison Fletcher Randall, at my death bed rather than have a pair of shoes. But I’m not exactly a shoe person (shoes are for losers) … I actually want to be buried barefoot, Paul McCartney style.
This song is RIDICULOUS. It’s the “I Believe I Can Fly” of Christmas songs. The music and lyrics are, on the surface, beautiful and heartwarming, but the core of the song is tragically cheesy and poorly written. And guess what—they made a MOVIE out of it. AND a book.
However, I have a relatively cute story to go with this song: Christine and I made an interpretive dance with synchronized hand motions for the entire song once when we were in elementary school during a walk out in the cold. I wish I remember some of those moves…
In the defense of the song, however, I will say that the song writers (their band name is NewSong) do a lot of charity work for homeless children, which I think is very fitting and appropriate. Good job.
4. Jingle Bells
A. Basshunter branches out from doing his brilliant Swedish techno about video games and robots, and decides to cover the classic song. Featuring the absolutely necessary deep, robotized, voice declaring, “ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the JINGLE BASE.” With an introduction like that, you know it must be good.
B. James Taylor does a cover of this song. A touch of funk and some *fresh* jazz elements, and you have a memorable Christmas song that gets played annually to laughing audiences in the Randall household.
My mother was so excited to get a free copy of the James Taylor c.d. with the purchase of six cards from Hallmark… what a deal.
5. White Christmas
This song is one of the timeless Christmas classic. You’d think it would be impossible to ruin. THINK AGAIN. Proudly presenting White Christmas by Melt Banana off of Sony Records.
Melt Banana. Where to begin? They are a Japanese band “known for playing extremely fast noise music mixed with experimental electronica and pop-based song structures” according to Wikipedia. And… yeah, all their music is bizarre. But this song takes the cake.
The song beginss with a nice three notes on base guitar… then THE SCREAM. Followed by “IVEBEENDREAMINGOF-OFAWHITECHRISTMAS!!” Throw in some Hawaiian themed verses, and some bubble noises, and BAM, you win the most random, yet most original song on Julie’s ipod award! What an honor.
6. A Christmas Carol by Tom Lehrer
I love this song.
Probably the best Christmas joke song I have ever heard.
I used to know all the words to this song and perform it for my clueless friends in middle school, who thought I was so clever and came up with it myself (something that I never really cared to clarify…)
7. He’s the Man with All the Toys by the Beach Boys
A great sing-a-long classic, with “HUP!” added in between words to create the ultimate Beach Boys Christmas song (they did A LOT of original Christmas songs- ‘Little Saint Nick’, ‘Merry Christmas Baby’, ‘It’s Gonna be a Surfer’s Christmas’ just to name a few…). Not only that, but they have the higher-than-natural-pitch that we all know and love. It makes me sad to never hear this song on the radio, even though they WILL play Christmas Shoes about twice an hour….
8. Wonderful Christmastime
Paul McCartney will always be an idol for me because of reasons too obvious to explain, but this song just makes me think of Flight of the Concords:
“ You don't measure up to the expectation
When you're unemployed there's no vacation
No one cares, no one sympathizes
You just stay home and play synthesizers.”
Thank you, Inner City Pressure, for allowing Paul McCartney the chance of making an impressive melody out of one instrument.
9. Do they know its Christmastime At All
I understand the groans associated with this song. And I can totally understand why you want to change the radio station, but PLEASE hear me out on this song…
I know the repetition of the chorus, “Feed the World” is pretty clear. But I really don’t think that Band Aid repeating it twelve times is enough to get it into people’s heads that Christmas time is not about presents and candy and getting stuff. There are people in the world who don’t have the opportunity to give, nor do they receive any thing on December 25th. And as wealthy and privileged people, we should give all the help we can to these people, not only at Christmas time, but every day. So maybe instead of dedicating an entire month to buying more stuff, we should shift our focus to others; the underprivileged who live in poverty, those women and men that die from inhumane treatment and violence, and those who suffer from curable diseases.
Okay, I’ll stop preaching and being all Hippie now.
10. All I want for Christmas is to get Crunk
Let me begin by informing you that my love for this song is IRONIC. Let me also repeat. GUILTY PLEASURE.
Now that we have that clear, I can shamelessly admit to knowing all the words to this song by heart. I was introduced to it by my exboyfriend, who joked that it would soon be my favorite Christmas song. Little did he (and I) know that I have a secret obsession with Christmas rap, featuring dirty innuendos and otherwise forward sexual references such as “playing with my dirty toys” with vibrating noises in the background… I mean, how could you not like a song set to Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy with a rap by a group called DIRTY BOYZ? Exactly.
So there you have it. And now you know my 1 weakness in life, and will surely make fun of me for it, and you know what? That is my Christmas Special for you.
I would like to end with my favorite Christmas quote....As Dirty Boyz say, "Happy holidays to all my girls up in here, have a merry Christmas and a crunk new year."
Thank you for serenading me in my boredom and brain damaged state, who knows what would have happened if you had not done that. I totally agree with number two. The number three song moved me deeply as well, but now I am going to have to listen to it with new ears since I have never thought of it in that way before. I would like to say thank you now for introducing such interesting and slightly bizarre music to me in the form of four and five, among others (you know which ones). I have never heard of number six so I of course looked it up with this wonderful and powerful machine at my fingertips. I found it funny but at the same time sadly true; in fact it could be tied to song number two and if you don't get why then forget I said anything about it. The bit at the end of number six with you not clarifying to others that you had not in fact written that song reminded me of this story: My first boyfriend was an exchange student from the Czech Republic and had never heard (obviously) of American Christmas songs. I drew him a picture in class one day near Christmas time and wrote down several lyrics from Dean Martin's "Let it Snow" song. Later we were riding in the car when that song came on and he had apparently thought that I myself had dreamed up that song and in some way was famous. Unfortunately I told him the truth because I was a foolish fifteen year old girl and did not strke while the iron was hot. Needless to say it was still entertaining. I will say only this for the seventh song: I can't stand the beach boys, one song is enough for an entire year. I can say nothing but wonderful things about Paul McCartney because if I say anything else you will kill me in my sleep, or worse. But truly eight is fine and dandy. For number nine I agree again with what you are saying, even if it does seem mushy and hippie the world needs more of that if it would make a difference on society. Ahh...number ten. I can not express the feelings I have towards this song. Just know that it will forever be associated with you and freshmen year of college, good times. Hope you get crunk for Christmas:)*fist pump in the air*
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