The . . .Worst . . . Christmas Song . . . Ever

A radio station within my range of reception has been playing exclusively Christmas music since Halloween. I like Christmas music as much as the next person -- actually I like it more than most people do -- but I while I think it's sad that some legitimately good songs are buried for much of the year, even I think continuous Christmas music from Halloween until December 26 is excessive.

The station of which I am writing does this all-Christmas-music-from-Halloween-until-Christmas format thing every year. Part of the problem with this station's November/December programming isn't just that the songs are all Christmas songs, but that there are too few of them in the play list. I'd estimate that they're rotating no more than 100 songs for twenty four hours every day.

Even within the confines of the format, the repetition is unnecessary. A very large number of musicians, living and dead, have recorded Christmas albums. All the station would have to do is to acquire rights to an additional ten or twenty of these albums each year in order to improve the quality of the broadcasts and make the few remaining part-time listeners less unhappy. I can't see such a thing happening anytime soon, though. If not playing same renditions of the same songs over and over and over hasn't yet occurred to the braintrust that first came up with the idea, I have grave doubts as to whether  constructive criticism occurring in any from other than being struck by a bolt of lightning or a visit either from the ghost of Christmas past or from God himself would convince them.

Roughly one time of every three times I click onto the station in my car, "Do They Know It's Christmas" is playing. This is a song I enjoy; it's in my own collection. I like the song itself, and I like the idea that a group of musicians got together to make a charitable contribution for starving people. I don't necessarily want to hear it, or any other song, for that matter,  two or three time a day for the better part of eight consecutive weeks, though.

If the previously mentioned song isn't playing, most often Frank Sinatra's version of "Let It Snow" is on. There are probably people my age who cannot tell the difference between Frank Sinatra and Tennessee Ernie Ford, but I'm not one of such ignoramuses. While my knowledge of Sinatra is far from encyclopeidic,  I know that he was an incredibly talented musician with an incomparable instrument of a voice. I wish I could say the same for his back-up singers. One particular female who sang along with Sinatra on many of his holiday recordings possessed an almost inconceivably grating voice. Sinatra was reported to have been a shrewd businessman. My hope is that this woman, whoever the hell she was, compensated Sinatra handsomely for the privilege of singing background vocals on his records. I would hate to think he actually paid her to ruin his recordings.  Then again, maybe she paid him in non-monetary ways, if you get my drift. A whole lot of that sort of thing went on back in the day, or so I've been told.

The station also pays far more Gene Autry material than any listener not in the profoundly deaf category would choose to hear. I understand that there is a major nostalgia effect going on with the music of Gene Autry. It sort of evokes memories of the day when a cowboy hat-topped head and a decidedly unimpressive voice could  hold an audience's attention for more than thirty seconds to the extent that he would untimately bilk said audience for a sufficient sum to one day buy his own professional baseball team. Face it: in today's world, the man wouldn't have gotten past the initial round of American Idol. For that matter,  Gene Autry would never have survived the gong in that iconic 70's American Idol predecessor. We'll give him "Here Comes Santa Claus" since he wrote it, not that it's all that solid a work in and of itself, but Autry's destruction of the Christmas music genre should begin and end with his signature work. His molestation of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Rendeer" was and is an affront to God, Santa Claus, and reindeer everywhere, and should from this day forth be prohibited except in the privacy of the homes of any listeners so lacking in musical discrimination that they would find such an abomination remotely tolerable. Hell,  for that matter, even if I were a Libertarian, I wouldn't have a huge problem with banning the playing of Gene Autry Christmas music in private settings. Some things are just plain wrong.

This next song is so utterly hideous, though, that I'd almost (note: I said almost) rather listen to Gene Autry butcher Christmas music for twenty-four consecutive hours than to hear it played in its entirety even once. I can't for the life of me figure out how it ever made it onto anyone's playlist, but it did. It's a preposterous story made into an even worse song. If you haven't yet deciphered the identity of the song I'm describing, it is most likely because you've blocked out any and all associations with this music-related (I refuse to use the term musical in reference to this most tragic occurrence in the history of music) catastrophe. I only wish I, too,  possessed the capability to block such traumatic recollections.

Anway, the song, "Christmas Shoes"  recounts the tale of a little boy who wants to buy a pair of shoes for his mama on Christmas Eve because she's going to die very soon and he wants her to look pretty when she meets Jesus. I swear I'm not making this up.
 
I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of a child losing a parent -- it very nearly happened to me when I was a little girl-- but sometimes a manufctured story of such is nothing more than a shameless attempt to tug at the heartstrings of listeners to the tune of lining one's pockets. I can't believe anyone fell for the ruse.This is easily the worst song ever written.

Columnist Dave Barry wrote a book about bad songs called [fittingly] Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs. I sometimes wonder what Dave Barry thought when this song came out a decade or two after his book. Did he consider reclaiming as many copies of the book as he could gather so that he could throw them all into a heap, pour on a bit of lighter fluid, and torch them all to ashes, because the very premise of his book had been rendered a complete and total lie in a single drunken or deranged night of [un]musical composition? Did he give up writing altogether? (I haven't heard much from him since then, come to think of it.) Or is he holding his thoughts, knowing that any publication from him declaring a particular song to be the worst song ever will challenge some unscrewed person out there to create an even more heinous piece of musical and literary repulsiveness just to prove to Barry and everyone else that musical and literary depravity is infinite?

In the near future I will list my favorite Christmas songs. Pleas feel free to share yours as well. In the meantime,  I leave you with this atrocity.

Perverts, Yellow Ribbons, and Massacre of the English Language: Truly Abominable Songs That I HATE

Dave Barry once wrote a book about songs he strongly disliked called Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, or something very similar. He solicited the opinions of readers, which he used along with his own personal takes on various works of music. He employed certain criteria, most of which I don't remember. One criterion I do recall is that the song had to have attained at least a modicum of popularity or radio play time for consideration. Another was that the song could not have been presumably written as a joke. For example, at some point in the late sixties or early seventies, a song entitled "Muh Nuh Muh Nuh" actually received airtime and possibly even achieved top forties status, yet was not considered among Barry's "bad songs" because it must have been intended as a joke of some sort, albeit not a very funny one, except to the composer and recording artists, who laughed their way to the bank.

Barry had e few memorable takes on the songs he discussed. I remember Dan Hill's recording of "Sometimes When We Touch" described as sounding as though it was sung by someone as he was receiving a prostate exam from Captain Hook. barry also took shots at songs I actually like, such as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitgerald." I can't remember exactly what offended him about that particular song; it may have been the line "As big freighters go, it was bigger than most, with a crew and a captain well-seasoned." I'll concede that the line wasn't one of Lightfoot's most profound. The man has a catalogue of thousands of works, with some truly poetic language ["Triangle, triangle, oh see my ship dangle" happens to be one of my personal favorites, but there are great lines from scads of Lightfoot's songs from which to choose.] In any event, I feel that Barry found one mediocre line out of a very long ballad and declared a better-than-average song bad based solely on that one line. In any event, it's OK. Dave Barry certainly doesn't need to seek my permission before criticizing a song. Besides, I don't think I was even born when he wrote his book.

I have neither the knowledge nor the stature among literari or in life in general to compose such a book of my own. Nothing, however, stops me from writing a blog on the topic of songs I hate with every bit as much intensity as I hate child pornography.

Song Number five on my list would never have made it on Barry's list because Dave Barry only used pop songs. This one's a hymn, and an obscure one at that. It's called "Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses." It's uniquely Mormon in origin and use, and is so bad that many Mormons don't even know it exists. My grandfather, however, LOVES the song, and sings it to the family at every family gathering. You'll probably never hear this song, and so you'll have to take my word for it that even if you love hymns, this is one you would NOT love, and if you hate hymns, hearing this one could cause you to want to drive nails through your own eardrums.

Song number four on my list is sort of the "song to hate" du jour. "Friday," by Rebecca Black, is particularly unpopular among people my age, as well as those older and younger. The lyrics sound like a poetry assignment scratched out in a hallway thirty seconds before the tardy bell by a seventh-grader who was a C-student at best. The melody sounds like a Music Composition I assignment attempted by a student randomly plucked from the home economics department.


Song number three is not exactly a hymn; it's a church song for Mormon children. It's not actually in any church songbook as far as I know, but it was written by an LDS composer. The title alone is insulting to the intelligence of the profoundly retarded. It's occasionally sung by Mormon children for special performances, and refusing to sing it once caused me to be taken out of a church building and beaten by an evil aunt. The song is called, "I Did and I Does and I Do." Need I say more?

Song number two, sung by Roberta Flack and written by I have no idea who, is "Killing Me Softly With His Song." If he's really killing her with his song, why doesn't she just die and get it over with? Leave the rest of us out of the process, please. It's like a person who commits suicide but isn't content merely to kill himself or herself, but must take an entire busload of people along with him or her. My mother knows how much I hate this song. She insists that she will sing it at my wedding. I've told her it's in no way appropriate to be sung at anyone's wedding. Some songs, such as "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands," are not wedding songs. "Killing Me Softly With His Song" falls into that category, in addition to being a really grating song. I've told my mom that the moment she stands up and sings one note or word of that song at my wedding, I will grab my groom by the collar and drag him down the aisle, and we'll complete our nuptials at an undisclosed location. I hope she knows I MEAN it.

Song number One is from the seventies. "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" is the title, and I'd hate to have lived through its prime. Just hearing it on oldies stations when my parents force them on me in the car is enough to cause me to beg for anti-nausea medication. The melody alone is vexing beyond belief. Once when my Bluebirds group went to visit a Senior Citizens' Center, some old geezer was playing it on an organ there, and it was all I could do even at the age of six to keep from running out of the building to avoid hearing more of that awful melody, and that was without the words. Add the words, and it would have caused Ghandi to advocate nuclear war. The song is about a guy who was in prison. He didn't know whether the woman he loved before he did his time in the pokey wanted him back after his release. The signal she was to leave as to whether she still desired his services was a yellow ribbon, which was to be tied around "the old oak tree." Wherever the hell that was, it must have been somewhere right along the bus route, because the ex-con asked the bus driver to look for the yellow ribbon because he (the ex-con) could not bear to look for himself. Of course the yellow ribbon was there; in fact, not just one ribbon, but a hundred yellow ribbons were tied around the freaking tree. You know how it went, I'm sure, with whole damn bus cheering and all. We'll leave the analysis of the melody to some musicologist, who, I'm fairly certain would rip it to shreds, while we merely analyze the plot. Obviously some form of mail existed, because the ex-con wrote his woman to tell her how to indicate her desire. Why couldn't the woman just write him back and tell him "Yes, I can't wait to be in your arms again," or "I don't ever want to see your perverted face again, you sucking wad of stachbotrys mold!"? (The song never revealed why the guy was incarcerated, but I've always assumed it must have been a sex crime of some sort.) Any average freshman English student could tell you in analysis of the plot that there should have been clues somewhere along the way. Did the woman ever visit the guy in prison? Did she scrawl "Return to Sender" on every piece of mail he sent to her and have them delivered back to him, or did she respond with her own letters of endearment? If an eight-grader submitted this plot in story form, depending upon the mechanics of the writing, either a "D" or and "F" would be boldly written in red at the top of the paper. It's almost as trite as the classic, "And I woke up and it was all just a dream" ending, which hardly any teacher past first grade accepts.

If I thought about it for longer, I'm sure I'd come up with more truly abhorrent songs, but I've probably already caused nightmares just with what I've writen. Feel free to share your own list of truly abominable songs in the "comments" section.