OK, so here we are again—in Christmas music hell. Retailers have been joyfully feeding us Christmas music earworms since the last pumpkin withered on the Hallowe’en vine. Some didn’t even wait for the trick-or-treaters to have their day before decking their shelves with Christmas merch and blasting our eardrums with Last Christmas et al. to imbue the ancient Christmas virtue of overspending.
Soon, there will only be a brief respite as we repent the Boxing Day ‘twofers’ until the whole sorry cycle starts again. Think about it as seasonal scope creep. The hype will begin in February, and All Mariah Carey Wants for Christmas will enliven every waking moment (and likely a few of the sleeping ones too).
To acknowledge this annual procession of sublime to ridiculous, the editorial team at The Colourful Times decided to inaugurate the Never Succumb to Beige Earworm Awards. I unilaterally decided to limit entries to “modern classics” and exclude traditional Christmas carols. Even though there is an abundance of equally glorious and abysmal carol renditions, we had to draw the line somewhere. Maybe next year. The songs range from the good, the bad and the ugly, sometimes alll three. They’re included because … er … “Who’s Queen?”… it’s my call.
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Without further ado, the 2024 winners are:
Christmas Song by a Great Musician Who Should Know Better
Even the best musicians can fall prey to hubris. This category recognises the many who fall off their talent wagon to binge on banality. Superstars who have temporarily lost any connection with the plot by deciding that recording a knock-off or hastily knocked-up Christmas song would … do what? Add lustre to their undeniable genius. Embrace an exciting artistic challenge. Give their fans an addition to their Christmas playlists. Wait up. Could it be a great way to top up the bank balance? Earworms galore from too many great musicians to mention.
Winner: Wonderful Christmastime—Paul McCartney
Runner Up: Christmas Tree—Lady Gaga & Space Cowboy
highly commended: Jingle Bells—Barbra Streisand
Oh dear. Sir Paul might be the ultimate icon of the music industry, but this song has no redeeming features. It just gets worse from the awful canned opening chords, presumably trying to invoke sleigh bells, to a choir of children singing a ding dong chorus. It’s disjointed, synthetic, soulless, but annoyingly catchy.
Lady Gaga is a star with so many gifts to offer. This addition to the Christmas cannon isn’t one of them. “Wake me up, put me on top, let’s fa-la-la-la”. Full of not very well-worked innuendo, including comparing her vagina to a Christmas Tree, “Ho ho under the mistletoe” indeed. No star is born with this recording.
OK, we all love Babs. But this strange mix of too fast, too slow and plain weird tempi, presumably trying to show off our diva’s musicianship and witty vocal swoops, does nothing for the song (terrible anyway) or the divine Ms Streisand’s voice. What a clunker.
The Santa Baby Self-Objectification Award
Santa Baby has been recorded by just about everyone who fancies donning some slinky skimpy Christmas kit and trout-pouting their way through a flirtation to Santa. The song is triumphant celebration of the acquisitive spirit and includes a Christmas shopping list that would make Eva Peron’s tendencies seem unambitious. Let’s face it; nothing says peace on earth, goodwill or love quite like the deed to a platinum mine, a duplex or a stocking full of cheques. Nontheless, it’s unquestionably one of the classic earworms.
Oh come on Michael, if you’re going to record this perennial plonker, don’t keep the title and change the words in the song itself. “Santa Buddy” just doesn’t rock it like “Santa Baby”. Just wrong.
They’ve been ‘awful’ good girls. Awful being the operative word. This one gets an award largely from having the absolute all-time top self-objectifying video. Fantastic costumes and sets, though.
I found 16 versions on YouTube by celeb singers, including one by Marilyn Monroe. The Eartha Kitt original, released in 1953, actually works as a piece of its fifties time. Still a monster earworm!
The Nostalgia Overkill Award
This award is for the songs that most evoke the season’s sentimentality. They build a Christmas Fantasia in our hearts and minds. In this world, the snow is glistening in the lanes as you walk hand in hand in a sparkling winter wonderland. People here build sumptuous snowmen and swirl joyously around the local ice rink in matched pairs of ironic (if you’re being kind) Christmas jumpers. When the sun goes down, the stars are brightly shining as they steal mistletoe kisses and toast chestnuts around an open fire, slurping romantic mulled drinks. And all these Christmases are, of course, gloriously white. The nostalgic themes almost guarantee their earworms status.
winner: White Christmas — Bing Crosby
Runner up: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas—Judy Garland
Highly commended: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas—Jonnie Mathis
By a forest of glistening treetops, this is the goldstandard for nostalgia. Bing was the ultimate crooner, and no subsequent recording has come close to his velvety mawkishness. No question, this is a quality earworm.
It seems every artist in creation has recorded this schmoozy little number. But this Judy Garland version gets me in the tear ducts every time and sticks hardest in my brain.
Did anyone ever live in this fantasy? Who’d want to? There are loads of versions, but I chose this one because of its singularly awful and, to the modern worldview, slightly inappropriate video. Whoever’s singing this causes an instant, replay loop.
Judge’s comments: The winners are all decades old. While there are many more recent mawkishly sentimental offerings, for them to sink into the collective consciousness takes time and many, many plays over the years, so in this category, the oldies are definitely the goodies.
Worst Ever Christmas Song Award
“The best Christmas songs of all time bring tidings of pop-inflected comfort and groovy joy. These… aren’t those songs. They’re sludgy byproducts of humanity’s consumerist urges, sentimentalist miscalculations and questionable tastes”. Andy Kryza, Time Out Nov 2022
This is the most crowded category; the principal qualification is to be a holistically terrible song. The song must fail on every level—musically, lyrically, sentimentally and thematically. These are the genuine Christmas turkeys. The earworms extraordinaire to get friends and family rocking away from the Christmas tree and out the door in horror, hands jammed against ears before you can say In the Bleak Midwinter. I’m not sure whether all of these even count as earworms. More ones that scar you for life every time you here them.
WINNER: I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus —Jackson 5
What is there left to say about this? Just eew on every level. The screechy, annoying boy soprano of Michael Jackson. The ludicrous lyrics and popcorn pop soundtrack are now unavoidably layered over the knowledge of the Neverland non-wonderland to come.
RUNNER UP: That’s Christmas to Me—The Pentronix
If the eggnog (see my other Christmas Post) doesn’t make you shed the contents of your full Christmas stomach, this mawkish, schmaltzy, batshit boring horror most certainly will. It’s only three minutes, but as a Rolling Stone reviewer said, it feels like 30. If this doesn’t make you lose the will to live, nothing will.
HIGHLY Commended—The tip of the iceberg!
Have a Cheeky Christmas— The Cheeky Girls. The terror in the reindeer’s eyes says it as the girls “get sexy in the snow”. Over-spiced but undeniably catchy.
Drummer Boy — Justin Bieber and Busta Rhymes. Rap meets pap in this crucifixion of an old favourite from Justin’s second album. Perhaps I should cut the dude some Christmas goodwill. He was only 17. But Rhymes was old enough to know betta.
Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)—The Darkness. An OTT falsetto rock Christmas confection of tack and sleigh bells complete with a children’s choir and schoolboy naughtiness. Sleigh balls, more like.
Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer—Elmo and Patsy. Matricide anyone? Dark, grizzly and dangerous to know lyrics. “Hoof prints on her forehead and incriminatin’ Claus marks on her back”. Eek.
Christmas Saves the Year—Christmas Saves the Year. I’m nearly speechless (sadly, not quite): useless lyrics, terrible vid, and rock-bottom musical effects. “Snow falls down from the grey skies”. The lyrics alone nearly turned my heart to slush. Just horrible.
Funky Funky Christmas—New Kids on the Block. Nothing like a bit of rap in fake English accents.
Don’t Shoot Me Santa—The Killers. More like, please shoot me Santa. Teen domestic terrorist meets avenging Santa—what could possibly go wrong?
Dominick the Donkey—Lou Monte. It ‘s been deescribed as the spiritual cousin to the Chicken Dance, but much more irritating. Hee haw.
I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas—Gayla Peevey. This is another cracker where you could blame the fifties or little Gayla’s tender ten years and let it go. But … I can’t. It’s a nasty, nasal, nonsensical calamity.
A Holly Jolly Christmas—Burl Ives. “It’s the best time of the year”. Perhaps, but without a doubt, it’s not the best song. With lines like, “Ho ho the mistletoe…”, kill me now.
Judge’s comments: This judging thing is trickier than it sounds—someone’s hell on Christmas earth is someone else’s heavenly peace. In November 2024 Finance Buzz surveyed more than 1,200 U.S. adults to better understand the most popular Christmas songs and the most annoying ones in every state. Most of the songs on the worst lists were also on the best lists.
2024 Supreme Christmas Song Earworm Award
The final, supreme award category is what it says on the tin—songs you simply cannot get out of your head once you’ve heard them. Love or hate them, they’ve squatted in your mind like a tenement rat and play on in a doom loop until Yule gives way to a New Year. The reason they’re so successful as earworms is because, well, they’re sticky. Many are fun, and some are seriously good songs.
winner and runner up:
All I Want for Christmas is You—Mariah Carey
It has to be Mariah. This song is unquestionably the forever winner. It’s the most successful Christmas music earworm ever and the one to beat since its release in 1994.
Consider this if you ever wondered why so many perfectly sensible musicians lose their cool at Yule. Forbes Magazine estimates that Mariah Carey makes a profit of $2.5m every year from All I Want. Let’s not forget the $60 million in estimated royalties when the song came out and topped the charts in 26 countries.
As Forbes said, “It’s the gift that keeps on receiving”.
Highly commended
- Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day—Wizzard
- Santa Claus is Coming to Town—Frank Sinatra
- Merry Christmas Everyone—Slade
- Feliz Navidad— José Feliciano
- Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree—Brenda Lee
- Jingle Bell Rock—Boby Helm
Judge’s Comments: This is only a drop in the bucket—I salute the entire captivatingly infuriating, earwormy Christmas canon of music-adjacent songs we love to hate. Who’d be a music critic?
Christmas turkey, anyone?
And there you have it. As usual, the judge’s (i.e. my) decisions are final. No correspondence will be entered into, but I encourage you to leave your selections for the People’s Choice Award in the comments.
So, I’ll sign off and leave you to ponder your own Christmas turkey list. If you’re stuck for gift ideas, show someone your true feelings by sharing a song or an entire playlist—a collection of your favs or worst-ever Christmas songs. Forget revenge porn, Christmas song earworms are much worse. Ensuring Christmas crackers like Dominic the Donkey run through their head through to the end of January will gladden the most Achy Breaky Heart and undoubtedly bring the prescribed amount of comfort and joy.
So go deck those halls of yours, listen for the sleighbells, enjoy the jingle bell time, sleep in heavenly peace and may all your Christmases be … whatever you want them to be.
Feliz Navidad y’all
PS Fun fact for the word geeks
In case you wondered, our lovely German friends came up with the concept of the earworm (öhrwurm) more than 100 years ago to describe the phenomenon of having a song suck in the brain. There’s also “stuck tune syndrome” and “musical imagery repetition”, but they don’t exactly fire the imagination. The thought of a bug crawling into your brain through your ears is much more creepily memorable—a sort of mashup of onomatopoeia and personification—and it quickly became ubiquitous.