The 10 Most Annoying Christmas Songs

The holidays are a time of joy, a time of togetherness, and a time of some of the most annoying music on the planet being hammered into your skull 24-7 like so many molten nails slathered with weaponized E. coli. And it’s only getting worse: Thanks to the increasing consultant-run crapfest that is modern monopolistic radio, this year, an unbelievable 400 different stations in the U.S. switched to an all-holiday music format, all the time, starting back at Thanksgiving. No, seriously. And many big cities even have more than one station doing it, and you know they’re all playing the same stuff over and over.




10. Dr. Elmo, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”


Maybe we wouldn’t hate this song so much if we’d only heard it once or twice; novelty songs have a tendency to lose their punch rather quickly. But this song’s unquenchable endurance testifies to its evil power. Every year we think (we hope, we pray) it’s dead, then it comes right back like a festering herpes sore.






9. Beach Boys, “Little Saint Nick”

We really wanted to use a clip of Brian Wilson performing this horrible ditty on Jimmy Kimmel last Christmas, but the sight of a chair-bound Wilson, unable to keep his lips moving along to the guiding vocal or even put his hands up on the keyboard, was just too sad. We didn’t want that to distract you from the fact that this brutal caterwauling though a completely nonsensical song about a drag-racing Santa shows that the man got off easy.




8. Madonna, “Santa Baby”

The song may technically be a classic, but Eartha Kitt’s sexually disturbing “Santa Baby” is one of the worst Christmas songs ever performed…now outdone by Madonna’s totally unnecessary cover version featuring a piss-poor impersonation of Eartha. Hurry down her chimney, Santa! It should be an easy fit… (We were going to put up video of Madonna actually singing it, but this clip of some dudes skating in Central Park to the song is sooooo much more entertaining.)



7. Adam Sandler, “Hannukah Song 3″

We don’t want to disriminate in our hatred based on religion, so we’ll include one Hannukah song on the list. As if this painfully-unnecessary-sequel-to-an-unnec essary-sequel of an overplayed-but-good song isn’t bad enough, it insists on supporting the career of Rob Schneider amidst its all-new list of partial Chosen People. Watch the video for the uncomfortable moment at 2:59 when Adam sings, “Jennifer Connelly’s half-Jewish too, but I’d like to put some more in her”…while backed by a chorus of cherubic young children.




6. Mannheim Steamroller, “Deck the Halls”

They play songs everyone knows on a crappy Casio keyboard with a disco beat and they sell millions and millions of albums. Thanks to the fact that we as Americans are complete morons, these Mannhymen have sold 27 million records in the U.S. alone, and are officially the best-selling holiday act of all time. Hope you’re proud of yourselves, America. This is why the terrorists hate us




5. The Singing Dogs, “Jingle Bells”

This gratingly awful ditty proves that a bark can indeed be worse than the most painful, gangrenous bite. As if the one song isn’t annoying enough, it’s only part of an entire 40-minute album…that inspired several sequel albums and a Jingle Cats spin-off. And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten—can we live there too?




4. Winger, “Silent Night”

As if the off-key vocal “harmonies” don’t massacre the song badly enough in its traditional arrangement, about halfway through Kip Winger asks his boys to “make it a little more funky.” Then the hair band begins a pathetically pre-rehearsed “ad-lib” into a rocking version of Silent Night that completely defies the title of the song. Fun fact: It was soon after this little performance aired that MTV started moving away from playing music videos. Coincidence? We think not.



3. Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, “Little Drummer Boy”

Apart, these two Sisters of Suck are bad enough, but put them together and they’re suddenly the Wonder Twins of terrible. From the opening notes Jessica shows a level of total tone-deafness that would make Helen Keller cringe, and the girls’ complete lack of harmony when Ashlee chimes in only makes it worse. Beware: If you once thought of these girls sexually (we’re looking at you, Joe Simpson), this song will cure you of that. It’s the equivalent of seeing a hot girl sneeze all over herself.



2. Newsong, “Christmas Shoes”

It’s almost as if the Christian band Newsong hired a focus group to help them intentionally write the worst song of all time. First, they take a dirt-poor kid (literally—he’s “dirty from head to toe”) and have him spending his carefully saved-up money to buy a pair of shoes for Momma…because she’s DYING. On Christmas Eve. And not dying in a purely non-sectarian way, of course—she’s going to “meet Jesus tonight,” so, naturally, she has to be wearing some nice shoes to his birthday party or Jesus is totally going to kick her unfashionable ass out of heaven. To top it off, the kid counts his pennies and finds he doesn’t have enough, so the guy behind him in line has to learn the true meaning of Christmas by handing over a few cents he otherwise would have put toward his next crack whore. If we were the guy behind that kid in line, and knew he was going to write this wretched song about the whole experience, we would have beaten him up and stolen Momma’s shoe money on the spot.

And the most annoying Christmas song of all time is…

1. Paul McCartney, “Wonderful Christmastime”

If you ever need proof that God hates us and wants us to writhe in pain before putting out our own eardrums with a pencil, put this song on repeat play (as almost every retail store seems to do during the holiday season). The cheesy keyboards, the cloying, first-grade-level lyrics, the mind–numbing monotony and repetition…how the hell did they ever let this guy in the Beatles? And that’s most pathetic choir of children we’ve ever heard of—they needed to practice all year long to sing “ding dong ding dong ding dong”? They must have been as high as Paul was when he decided this song was worth the tape it was recorded on. As a Christmas gift to everyone on Earth, Paul, we’re sending Mark David Chapman your address.


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