There’s a lot of bad Christmas music out there. Most of it is bad. Do not click on that Coldplay video about. We just put it there to serve as an example of bad Christmas music. We didn’t even listen to it, we already know it’s bad because it’s Coldplay. Click on the links below instead.
#1 Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms: Really the only thing that sucks about it is that it’s too short at two minutes and 11 seconds, too brief a respite from mostly awful other Christmas music.
#2 Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives: Also pretty short. Also needs to be the album version. The one Ives sings as the snowman in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” isn’t nearly as good.
#3 Frosty the Snowman by the Ronettes: It was good before it was in Goodfellas. It’s even better that it was in Goodfellas in the scene where the crew celebrates the Lufthansa heist.
#4 Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley: The King crushed it.
#5 Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: So did The Boss.
#6 Run Rudolph Run by Chuck Berry, Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love, Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano, Little Saint Nick by the Beach Boys, most of the Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole classics: Honorable mentions.
#391 Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid: Catchy piece of sappy cultural imperialism.
#973 All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey: It’s okay. Doesn’t deserve nearly as much of the renewed hype as it’s gotten over the last few years. Like a McDonald’s meal.
#1,267,326,405 Last Christmas by George Michael: Fuck this fucking song. Not Linking it.
#9,743,030,217 Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
#15,987,645,471 Baby It’s Cold Outside by Don Cornell and Laura Leslie: That MAGA site PJ Media on Friday published “It’s Time to Rehabilitate ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’” should say enough on its own, but the thing is the song was never actually good before it got “canceled” circa 2018.
#5,835,441,032,017,998,625 Anything by Michael Buble: He’s basically the Hitler of adult contemporary music, a genre itself that is arguably war crime. The unspeakable douchery of Buble becomes even more intolerable when he’s in Christmas mode. Every TJ Maxx and Marshall’s should be burned to the ground and the earth beneath it covered in salt for what they’ve done to propagate his hateful trill. Of course he covered “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with Broadway queen Idina Menzel.
Now maybe it was a little hyperbolic to call Michael Buble the “the Hitler of adult contemporary music,” and probably he’s more like a Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz, just an insufferable piece of shit who won’t go away even though it’s nearly impossible to find someone who sincerely likes them and their work, much less enough to justify their ubiquity. Maybe that’s what explains the overall staying power of shitty Christmas and/or adult contemporary music (and the detestable worms who call themselves Republican politicians, to degree). It’s not that a majority or even a plurality like them, it’s just that if Marshall’s and TJ Maxx and all the other worst retail music offenders suddenly decided to switch things up and play Led Zeppelin or Billy Idol or whatever else that doesn’t suck then the middle-aged regular Karens would complain to the managers. It’s the mere threat of alienating that obnoxious, vocal 10% whom pretend Coldplay is good inflicting such misery on the rest of us who sometimes shop at those stores. Might be the purest distillation of terroristic minoritarian rule.
We’ll just leave it here instead of going on for another ten paragraphs of profane complaining about in-store music, Christmas and otherwise, much fun as it is to bitch about such things.