Christmas songs – The worst

I love this time of year, and for me music plays a huge part in the wanton overindulgence that is Christmas. Next week I’ll be blogging a list of my favourite Christmas songs.

Until then, and in no particular order here’s a list of my worst. They can be heard here on Open Spotify.

1) Fairytale of New York – The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl

Fairytale of New York
A witty Christmas garment. Notice how the T-Shirt is green and the lettering Celtic in style? Great for pretending you’re Irish.

The song itself is miserable, drunken and self absorbed. Neither of them sing it particularly well, a fact exacerbated by the songs crushing self importance. Pissed people sing it with aching faces in pubs, like they somehow understand the pain of the fairytale, swaying from side to side like some kind of Irish wet dream.

The two singers play out some kind of musical theater but it just doesn’t work. Shane McGowan ends up as that bloke down the local who sits at the bar and bores everyone to tears with his tedious drunkenness. Kirsty MacColl becomes the human hating but kind hearted woman from the local cat rescue home, she’ll come into the pub to give Shane a loaf of bread and some beans so he gets something to eat.

When this song plays I never really know what to do with myself apart from stare at the floor and wait for it to finish.

Dreadful.

2) Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid

Few things turn the stomach more than a load of coked up Pop stars raising money for the starving and dispossessed. The song itself sounds like any suburban school choir, everyone trying to be heard as they close the end of year concert in front of their bored parents.

It’s dreadfulness is upstaged only by the fact that it’s been re recorded twice since the original in 1984. Amazingly, on both occasions organisers managed to find pop personalities that trumped the previous version in terms of whining insincerity. The result is a dreary sing along straight out if a west end show, worthy of nothing more than a couple of plays on daytime BBC Radio Wiltshire.

Anything can be justified in the name of charity, and nothing epitomises this more than Band Aid.

3) In Dulce Dubio – Mike Oldfield

This one’s a true shocker. An inane baroque style ditty played on a recorder, probably by a skinny man wearing a green pointy hat as he prances towards the local church, a load of vulnerable kids dancing behind him.

You think it can’t get much worse. Then it does, at 1 minute 25 seconds. An indulgent and wankish guitar solo that would put the work of poodle haired rocker Brian May to shame. Oldfield would apply the same over produced guitar masturbation to the Blue Peter theme tune a few years later.

Awful, it’s like the bloke never had access to a record collection when he was younger.

4) Mistletoe and Wine – Cliff Richard

Once started, this song never stops.

In fact it’s not so much a song, more of a mind numbing Christian mantra sung by off duty ambulance staff on a wet December day in Newbury. They don’t have to worry about having a set of songs because this Vera Lynn style nightmare will never end.

One could just imagine Cliff in the local old folks home, arms swinging above his head, reminding everyone how great it is to be a Christian. Fuck off.

5) Anything by Kevin Bloody Wilson

Kevin Bloody Wilson
Australian. The word cunt and Santa in the same sentence is mildly amusing if you’re 12.

Kevin Bloody Wilson wasn’t even funny when I was at school. Cunt isn’t particulary offensive anymore and neither is singing rude songs about “Santa”.

Kevin Bloody Wilson is everything you need to know about Australian humor and why so may of them now live in the UK. “Aussies” think that everyone outside Australia will is astounded by their sense of humor. Not so. Not offensive, not funny and not in the least bit Christmassy.

Wilson’s mere existence must reopen the debate on selective breeding.

6) Anything by Frank Sinatra

There was a dark side to everything “Blue eyes” was involved in. The mafia, kicking his pregnant wife down the stairs and racially abusing members of his band. Awful person, is it any wonder the Americans worship him so much? There is some irony in this spiteful little shit recording so many Christmas songs, but the interest ends there.

You couldn’t get less Christmassy if you tried. Horrible.

7) Walking in the Air – Aled Jones

Aled Jones
A terrifying image of a man who from this picture, actually thinks he is Christ.

This used to be on Channel 4 every Christmas Day and for some reason Dad used to make us watch it to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas, this before he disappeared up the pub for another eight pints.

Unlike the Poseidon Adventure, The Snowman was, and still is, mind numbingly boring. Like the birth of Christ, The Snowman is a bare faced lie dreamt up by people who think the message of peace and goodwill actually means something.

The reality is a haunting and terrifying soundtrack to the the realities of religious hatred and destruction. Aled Jones epitomises everything that is wrong with the tokenism of Daily Mail Christianity.