8. Basshunter - Jingle Bells
Obviously I have nothing against Jingle Bells. I do have something against it being turned into yet another piece of chart trance shit. This doesn't even have a hint of tongue in cheek about it.
7. Ronan Keating & Moya Brennan - Fairytale Of New York
When the original is so good, why would you bother to remake this Christmas song? Especially in such a bland, sanitised way. It's always going to be compared to the original, and when this actually makes the song sound like nothing special that's never going to be a good thing. Awful, but more importantly, totally pointless. This is what The Pogues episode of Glee would sound like.
6. Cliff Richard - Millennium Prayer
Cheap and nasty Y2K cash-in from Cliff Richard. He didn't write the music (it's "traditional", so Cliff didn't even have to pay to use it) or the words (those would be God's, and I'm sure he didn't ask for any royalties either). Fair enough it was for charity, but that doesn't stop it being pants. Still rears its ugly head around Christmas time every so often. Would be higher if it had more exposure today.
5. John & Yoko And The Plastic Ono Band With The Harlem Community Choir - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
A controversial choice I suppose, but I always skip this when it crops up on my Christmas compilations. I have my reasons. For one, it's just really dreary. Slow, almost dirge-like in places. Second, it's pretty depressing. I'm sorry, but I don't want to think about war at Christmas. I can think about how terrible war is and what I can do to help the rest of the year, but I don't want two hippies preaching at me through a Christmas song about it. Band Aid did it the right way in the '80s, but Lennon misses the mark here. Thirdly, Yoko Ono "sings" on it, and any Christmas song warbling all over it can just bugger off as far as I'm concerned.
4. Robson & Jerome - I Believe (Click here)
Awful, just awful. The only reason this isn't higher is that it seems to have sunk without a trace in recent years (along with R&J's music careers), but it's still cropped up on a few Crimbo compilations in its time. The only claim this can have to being a Christmas song is having a bloke dressed as Father Christmas in the video and Robson and/or Jerome stating the fact that it's meant to be Christmas. It wasn't even Christmas number 1.
3. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love
Nothing to do with Christmas, apart from the tenuous link that Christmas is a time for love. I'm pretty sure this one only crops up on Christmas compilations because of the music video, which is Christmassy, although apparently only because the song was released near the festive season. Also, it's dreary and just boring, and that's not what I look for in my Christmas songs.
Crappy boy band ballad sung by four blokes who clearly had a hand in the creation of chav culture. No part of the song has anything to do with Christmas in any way. The only thing that links the song to Christmas is that it happened to be 1994's Christmas number 1. And no, putting on parkas, shoving some snow over the top of your music video and some tubular bells at the end of your record doesn't change that. I really really wanted to put this as my top pick, but I just couldn't put the atrocity that's there anywhere else...
1. The Wombles with Roy Wood - I Wish It Could Be A Wombling Merry Christmas Every Day
A "mash up" which essentially destroys two 1970s Christmas songs at the same time: one that's pretty forgettable (A Wombling Merry Christmas by, well, The Wombles surprisingly); and, much more distressingly, one that's undoubtedly a modern Christmas standard - Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Have a listen if you've never heard it before. Starts harmlessly, if pointlessly, enough. Roy Wood sounds like someone doing a bad karaoke version of his own song, which is pretty pathetic. But then we get to the chorus. Oh dear lord, the chorus! THE CHORUS!! How did anyone hear that travesty of bodged lyrics and crowbarred extra notes that simply don't fit, and think this was worthy of releasing? It's just dire. It makes my skin crawl. This one has so much wrong with it that it beat East 17 to the top of my list - that's how much I hate this one.
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