Holiday music of the past few decades generally falls into two categories: remakes of classics and novelty tunes. The latter of which, played in proper sequence by CIA interrogators, would in all likelihood end the war on terror.
So don’t say we didn’t warn you. If you don’t want these “Oh Holy Nightmares” dancing around in your head for days, read no more. Run! Slam your shins in a car door. Collect canned goods … and swallow the cans. Anything. But whatever you do, do not turn on your radio!
1. ‘GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER’
Have yourself a Waffle House Christmas. Around since 1977, the song goes where few yule classics dare tread. But, hey, nothing says wholesome holidays like a tipsy granny and a hit-and-run driver. If he were a little younger, Jeff Foxworthy would probably have been conceived to this ditty. It’s just that, after you hear the thing once or twice (or on your average country station 162 jillion times), you start hoping you’ll get run over by a Greyhound.
2. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS SINGING ANYTHING
Helium for the holidays. This stuff was cute along about 1971. Their hits add new meaning to the after-Christmas phrase “bring one for the chipper.”
3. MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER PLAYING ANYTHING
This elevator (music) must go all the way up … to the North Pole. Why do you think Santa leaves every Christmas? Sure, the synthesized schtick sounds cool at first. After that it gets older than one of those aluminum Christmas trees. Referring to the group’s version of “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” a reviewer on Amazon.com writes, “No, I don’t.”
4. ‘I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS’
And we want a hippo-strength tranquilizer dart. If we hadn’t read somewhere that this beaut came out in the mid-’50s, we’d swear its lyrics - No crocodiles or rhinoceroseses; I only like hippopotamuseses - were written by a hippie on hallucinogens. One of our staffers says hearing the song “makes you want to hit the kid singing it in the face with a sledgehammer.”
5. THE DOGS BARKING ‘JINGLE BELLS’
Christmas in a kennel. (Not to be confused with a Kathie Lee Gifford Christmas special.) One round of this number and you’ll be down on all fours all right - trying to bury yourself alive.
6. ‘I’M GETTIN’ NOTHIN’ FOR CHRISTMAS’
Mommy and Daddy aren’t mad - they’re cracker-jack-loony beside themselves because their offspring sounds like a chipmunk.
7. ‘THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS’ (AND EVERY SPOOF OF IT EVER MADE)
Twelve days? We’d swear this song lasts 12 weeks. The thing lasts longer than you believed in Santa Claus. After you hear and a partri-idge in a pear tree about three times you’re ready to dive through plate glass. And why are there so many birds in this thing? The only time anybody gave us a bird at Christmas was in a Wal-Mart traffic jam.
8. ‘THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY’
In the unlikely event some kid had wandered into Bethlehem with a drum and vocal accompaniment that included the over-and-over lyrics pa-rump-pa-pum-pum, there not only would have been room at the inn, there would’ve been no one left in town. One of our staffers says, “After the rump-pa-pum-pums come in I start to lose it.”
9. ‘ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH’
Yeah, but if you’d quit singing the song sooner no one would have knocked them out. The song bites. The thing has been out since the mid-1940s, and here some 60 years later we have yet to meet the kid whose Christmas list begins and ends at “two front teeth.”
10. ‘SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN’ BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Even though the Boss reassures us that this is so by repeating the “Santa Claus is coming to town” line over and over, we’re still not buying it that any town in Jersey is on Santa’s itinerary. Springsteen’s version turns a piece of holiday pep into something along the lines of, oh, hydraulics on a garbage truck. Christmas tunes aren’t meant to screamed, belted or howled. Unless, of course, you’ve already reached your wit’s end and taken it upon yourself to swallow a canned good.
With: www.macon.com
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