The 5 Absolute Worst Christmas Songs

We begin this list with caveats. Yes, “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” stopped being funny when you were eight. Christmas is for seven-year-olds. Sure, the lyrics of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” are disturbing. It’s still a good song.

Our focus here is atrocious holiday music, by folks who could have produced something much better.

“Wonderful Christmastime”

Paul McCartney may be the greatest pop song writer ever. “Wonderful Christmastime” may be his worst effort. It’s grating. It’s boring. Its lyrics express no specific sentiment. Don’t get us started about the synthesizer. This is the ideal soundtrack for being trapped in a dentist chair with gauze in your mouth.

Somehow, this entered the pop Christmas canon. It has endured for 35 years and counting. It has earned Paul McCartney millions. Eradicating it will require frank cruelty. Ridicule your unsuspecting friends and relatives. This needs to end.

“Have a Funky, Funky Christmas”

New Kids on the Block have had an ironic resurgence. There’s a reason they went away. This is FIVE MINUTES of the same repetitive beat. There’s a random stanza with an English accent. You can’t even hate listen to this song for its entirety. It’s too slow and painful.

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“Christmas Tree”

We appreciate Lady Gaga’s oeuvre. But, this song is just abysmal. A DJ version of “Deck the Halls” with blunt sexual imagery. Terming it “imagery” is probably too kind. It’s hard to create a song about sex that is this viscerally off-putting. One positive: it’s less than three minutes long.

“Step Into Christmas”

Elton John’s singles from 1973: “Daniel,” “Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and this piece of crap. The generic lyrics are about cranking out a crappy, generic Christmas song. The only endearing part is grinding things to a halt in the video for a Watford shoutout. The B-side with brandy, cocaine, and Santa burning in the chimney is much more fun.

“Do They Know It’s Christmas”

It was well intended. It raised millions for charity. We almost gave it a pass. Then one more listen to inveterate tax exile Bono hamming it up set the blood boiling. We can go off on the profoundly ignorant lyrics or the smug neo-colonialism. But, the salient point for our purposes is that it’s a lazy, annoying song. Even Bob Geldof acknowledged it is terrible. Why not get Sting, Bono, Phil Collins, George Michael, Boy George etc. into a room to cover a good Christmas song and donate the proceeds from that?