Top 10 Best Christmas Songs (That Everyone Finds Annoying)

I got a temp job in retail before Halloween, which was enough time to get the basics before the Christmas season started.  And with the Christmas season came listening to the same awful Christmas songs day after day.  Yeah, I’d probably get sick of The Night Santa Went Crazy or Snow Miser – Heat Miser if I had to listen to them at work every day, but there’s a big difference between a song that’s been unfortunately beaten to death, and one that shaves precious, shootout-delaying sanity off post office employees every time it’s played.  So please, managers or whoever’s in charge of the music, understand that nobody in your store, least of all your employees, wants to listen to…

10. Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer is one of those songs that you’ll probably find amusing the first time you hear it, and don’t need to hear ever again.  And yet we’ve somehow found ourselves in a strange world where one of the most popular songs of the season is about a family member getting killed by Santa, probably kept alive by the same old people who think Marmaduke is funny.

9. Anything by Alvin and the Chipmunks

Explaining why The Chipmunks are annoying is like explaining why the Zodiac Killer was a loon – if you need it done, you’re probably five years old, which makes it all the more perplexing why stores still play these songs.  But then again, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel not only got produced it took in $112 million its first weekend, which both confuses and frightens me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StC8MhcgALc

8. The Hat I Got For Christmas is Too Big

When somebody tells you about an annoying Spanish Christmas song, the first thing you’ll think of is Feliz Navidad, followed by how much you want to punch that person for making you think about it.   And believe me, that was a strong contender for this list before I found out about this.  The Hat I Got For Christmas is Too Big – or The Hat I Got For Christmas is Too Beeg if you prefer – is about a man who got a giant sombrero from Santa Claus and would rather go around not knowing what he’s doing than take the bloody thing off, but all you really need to know is it’s sung by Mel Blanc in the voice of Speedy Gonzales.  The first time you hear it might be so bad it’s funny, especially if you can imagine it actually being sung by Speedy Gonzales, but on repeated hearings it’s just bad.

7. Baby It’s Cold Outside

Before you all go running to the Comments section, I’ve done my homework and I know this song is not about rape.  And I understand it was originally written in 1944, which if our grandmothers are to be believed was a far more wholesome time before The Simpsons destroyed America.  But when heard over the store’s speakers without the context of Frank Loesser performing it with his wife to entertain their house guests, any song about a man trying to keep a woman from leaving his house while the woman says “No” a lot, and contains lines like “Say, what’s in this drink” and “Baby you’re so delicious” is going to be really uncomfortable to listen to.

6. Autotuned Techno, Hip-Hop, and Rap Renditions of Classic Carols

Look, a lot of people are worn out on songs like Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bell Rock by the time they’re adults, after listening to them constantly for two straight months every year of their lives.  But like Aunt Myrtle’s fruitcake made with her secret family recipe, it’s a tradition we’ve learned to just accept and tolerate.  “Modernizing” them with dance bass and digital effects is not freshening them up, it’s just making them even more annoying.

5. All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth

If the name alone is making you cringe, just see how long it takes you to stop this video:

Now, if you were somehow able to sit through that, try it again with this version by (sigh) Alvin and the Chipmunks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiGWoi-9jrM

But maybe it’s just the annoying way the song is being sung in those two videos.  Okay, here’s a version by Nat King Cole, which you might be able to stand long enough to find out the whole song is four sentences repeated constantly for three bloody minutes.

4. Wonderful Christmas Time

After the Beatles broke up John Lennon got shot, Ringo Starr was reduced to narrating Thomas the Tank Engine, and Paul McCartney went on to make one of the worst damn Christmas songs ever by singing monotonously to a bad midi synthesizer.  You decide who got off worst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o8-eLZhrOA

3. Christmas Shoes

Christmas Shoes is the song of a boy trying to obtain a pair of shoes for his dying mother’s last Christmas, and just as the boy tries too hard to guilt the man into buying the shoes for his mother, the song tries to guilt you into feeling bad for in any way slamming it.  Christmas Shoes is not sad.  It’s not touching.  It’s manipulative.

2. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

If you’ve never heard of this song before, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a Weird Al satire, which probably would have been golden.  Instead it’s a song about a whiny, nasally kid trying her damnedest to make every girl’s Christmas wish for a pony look reasonable.  And sorry Gayla Peevey, hippos don’t like you.  Your teacher forgot to mention that just because they’re herbivores doesn’t mean they aren’t vicious sons of bitches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGLGJV01C0Q

1. Santa Baby

Santa Baby is about a woman who is either asking Santa to give her a bunch of expensive crap and then marry her, or making obscene demands from the rich husband she calls “Santa” or else she’s going to cheat on him.  And don’t ask how I put up with the pouty, flirty singing long enough to pull any sort of meaning from the lyrics.  Just… I don’t know.

While Santa Baby is a wretched song in so many ways, it’s especially maddening to listen to at work because when you’re busting your ass for minimum wage, about the last thing you want to hear besides the kid who trashed the girls’ clothing table screeching about how she never gets what she wants because her parents didn’t buy her the Barbie princess castle is some bimbo sexing up Santa for expensive cars, boats, and mineral mines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbQwecCzo8

By the way, did anyone else notice half these songs are about what the singer wants for Christmas?  Best to stay away from that subject if you write your own song.

Codie apologizes for what she’s just put you through.  If you forgive her, please visit her site at Codiekitty.com.

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