Everybody Having Fun

Christmas comes but once a year and when it does it clogs up airwaves and supermarket PA systems with the worst music you've ever heard; although a few of them probably sound okay when you're drunk or if you're the sort of twat who simpers awww, how can you not love ELO? when someone correctly explains that ELO were shit*. Anyway, here's an arbitrary and mercifully incomplete list:

Gene Autry Here Comes Santa Claus (1947) I'm not sure I ever heard this one back in England, but you can't escape from the fucker here in Texas. It does pretty much what you would expect of a song called Here Comes Santa Claus which may or may not be addressed to listeners under the age of three - it's kind of hard to tell. For some reason, the most irritating line is the one describing Santa's proposed route of travel via Santa Claus Lane. Aside from it being common knowledge that he can fly by admittedly mysterious means thus precluding the need to stick to roads, highways or any other existing feature of the urban landscape, the idea that he might arrive via a thoroughfare named after himself seems too coincidental to be even remotely plausible.

Awkward Geisha All I Want for Christmas Is You (2019) Awkward Geisha is Ade Rowe from Harsh Noise Movement and friends. This one comes from 100 Soft Rock Anthems, an album which also features moving and apparently sincere tributes to Barry of the Chuckle Brothers and Geoffrey from Rainbow, so we're dealing with individuals who rightly shun the general concept of guilty pleasures. This cover is therefore more faithful to the original than you might expect, given the pedigree and despite a free jazz approach to some of the instrumentation. It's a bit odd but I would be quite happy to hear this version blasted over the tannoy in my local supermarket.

Band Aid Do They Know It's Christmas? (1984) I don't even know that anything really needs saying about this one, and the general nobility of the cause doesn't make it a decent record, let alone excuse Bono suggesting that you should be glad it's them rather than you. Somehow my first exposure to the song was during a festive talent show at Maidstone College of Art. With everyone else juggling hard-boiled eggs or performing peculiarly ponderous comedy sketches, the kids from the art foundation course banded together to perform this song - all forty or fifty of them. I'd never heard it before and assumed it to be their own composition. The kid who handled most of the main vocal, and who probably came up with the idea, had a George Michael hairstyle and turned his back to the audience at the end of the song to reveal feed my ego printed on his t-shirt, which I assume was supposed to be a punchline amounting to, I'm not really an arsehole whom you've just watched performing a non-ironic cover of the current number one. Never having heard the song, much less being aware of its placement in the hit parade, most of this was lost on me. I simply assumed that the art foundation department had suffered a fall and hit its collective head or something.

Maria Carey All I Want for Christmas Is You (1994) She married the head of Sony, a man twenty years her senior who was, I'm sure, a lovely man with a great personality and I doubt that his using one-hundred dollar bills to light cigars was really a factor. She sings in that wobbly voice style which is mostly just notes, and I find it very, very difficult to believe that she would have been happy with just the person to whom the song was addressed on Christmas morning, a hunch I base on the b-side of the song being called What? Not Even a Pair of Fucking Socks, You Cheap Cow-Son? To my ears, the sincerity of the song seems therefore questionable. Awkward Geisha's version was better. Also, she resembles a pre-Toy Story CGI chipmunk.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie Little Drummer Boy (1977) While I can't really fault White Christmas, I've never found this a convincing duet. It's okay, and it's not actually offensive, but that's hardly a glowing endorsement. My favourite thing about Little Drummer Boy was my wife's aunt announcing that she'd discovered a duet sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie, and it was a Christmas song, and it was this Christmas song, and it was 2017 meaning that my wife's aunt was the only person on the planet who hadn't heard it by that point. This didn't stop her playing the song at us on her soundbar while smiling beatifically as though she'd recorded it herself and it was her gift to the rest of us.

Eazy-E Merry Muthafuckin' Christmas (1992) While some may object to the work of Eazy-E for its reckless moral irresponsibility, enthusiastically violent message and emphasis on sexual acts and substance abuse, the rest of us recognise this as pretty much the greatest Christmas song ever recorded, or if not the greatest, it's at least top two.

The Go-Go's I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek (1964) Oh just fuck off. Learn to use an apostrophe.

The Greedies A Merry Jingle (1979) The Greedies were actually the Greedy Bastards, an amorphous supergroup formed mainly for the sake of gigs and pissing about by members of Thin Lizzy, Chris Spedding, and Cook and Jones from the Sex Pistols. Regrettably this was the only record that came from the enterprise, although more was recorded. It's a bit shite but it's Cook and Jones, which is good enough for me.

Bobby Helms Jingle Bell Rock (1957) I assume the reference to rock was made so as to tap into the lucrative juvenile delinquent market because the song is otherwise a million miles away from anything ever recorded by Charlie Feathers and doesn't rock even a little bit, which is why it's fucking annoying. One might anticipate an exemption by virtue of its use in Mean Girls, which is arguably the greatest movie of all time, but no - the only reason it works in Mean Girls is specifically because it's fucking annoying.

Jethro Tull Christmas Song (1972) It's taken me the best part of a decade to work out quite what I feel about Jethro Tull, specifically that one should tread very, very carefully once past the first album and Witch's Promise. There's a live version of Living in the Past which Ian Anderson introduces with the words, this is an oldie that we've utterly loathed for fifteen long years but it's now resurrected in a slightly more tricky form to make it a little more fun to play. To my ears, this sounds somewhat akin to a complaint about those who, having paid to get into the venue, might want to hear the hit single when they could be improving themselves with that four-album song cycle about Gandalf written in 3/17 time; and Christmas Song conveys the same snooty attitude but more so, amounting to a passive-aggressive rendering of Once in Royal David's City which suffixes what little cheer it concedes with I just hope you're satisfied, you selfish cunt; because if anyone is qualified to deliver condescending sermons on the evils of greed and materialism, it's a man who once bought an island.

The Kinks Father Christmas (1977) It's a song about Father Christmas being mugged by inner city hooligans of some description - possibly bovver boys given that it was 1977. The b-side is a song called Prince of the Punks which is about how Tom Robinson thinks he's all lush with his gobbing, pogoing and safety pins but his real name is Tarquin, and so on and so forth. The Kinks were way past their best by this point and it's all a bit Two Ronnies if you ask me. Also, play this record immediately following the mighty Bully For You by the Tom Robinson Band and it sounds like Russ fucking Abbott, quite frankly.

Eartha Kitt Santa Baby (1953) I know it's Eartha Kitt but sorry, this is horrible. It's general delivery seems to ask us to consider Santa in a sexual context, which doesn't greatly appeal to me.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono Happy Christmas (War is Over) (1971) Possibly not quite so condescending as the Jethro Tull offering, but pretty close, and there was obviously something in the water that year. Apparently it was in part a protest song about the Vietnam war, and doubtless sounded great if you were living in New York in the early seventies. Unfortunately it sounded like pure ballsache if you were living in London between 1990 and 2009 and were obliged to endure the cheerless fucking dirge on the radio approximately every twenty minutes during the busy Christmas rush of a Royal Mail sorting office, which was already sufficiently stressful and miserable without having this pair of wankers turning up to sneer over your shoulder about what you haven't done to end the war in Vietnam.

Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmastime (1979) Irritating as fuck, but it means well and I've thawed to the McCartney in recent years. At least it isn't Happy Christmas (War is Over).

The Pogues Fairytale of New York (1988) I know this always comes up as somehow more authentic than the rest, and I suppose it is when compared to Christmas in Smurfland, and yes, we all miss Kirsty MacColl obviously; but I've never been particularly struck on the Pogues and this one didn't do anything to change my mind.

Frank Sinatra Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1948) While I'm disinclined to disparage Ol' Blue Eyes, his golden tonsils, or any of the legitimate Italian-American businessmen with whom he was allegedly associated, this one was written for Judy Garland five years earlier and never struck me as a great choice of cover. As a song it's mostly harmless but what the fuck is a merry little Christmas supposed to be? I presume it would be a low-scale celebration with just a few pals and maybe some tinnies, but quantifying such an undertaking as little sounds wrong somehow, almost as though the writers just needed two syllables in there so that the thing would scan right. I would have gone with Have Yourself a Merry Fucking Christmas, but I suppose that would have been frowned upon back in the forties.

Slade Merry Christmas Everybody (1973) I know it's become something of a cliché to claim this as the greatest Christmas song of all time, but it probably is.

Bruce Springsteen Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1985) I expect Bruce was simply covering somebody else's song here, but I don't care enough to find out who got there first. I'm not a massive fan of the Springsteen but accept that he has his moments. Unfortunately this wasn't one of them.

Shakin' Stevens Merry Christmas Everyone (1985) I remember Shakin' Stevens as a comical holiday camp Elvis knock off who was so stuffy and square that he probably didn't even know what the first Joy Division album was called, let alone where it was recorded or the name of the producer; but time passed and I found myself grudgingly forced to admit that actually, he didn't sound even remotely like he was trying to impersonate Elvis and his cover of Ricky Nelson's It's Late was pretty decent. These days I'm past caring. I'd listen to Shakin' Stevens before anything by Sonic Youth, and if Merry Christmas Everyone isn't quite up there with the true masterpieces of seasonal novelty songs, I've heard much, much worse.

The Waitresses Christmas Wrapping (1981) This rocks. In fact it's generally better than the thing it's singing about. I've always thought Christmas was a bit of an overrated institution.

Wham! Last Christmas (1984) I can't remember whether we're presently supposed to regard Wham! as having been pure shite or the most 'tastic thing ever, but I've never really had a strong opinion about them apart from their being better than Depeche Mode, which is hardly an achievement. I probably could have done with hearing this a bit less on the works radio, but at least it wasn't that John and Yoko shite, and it was always entertaining when my pal Richard sang along, changing the words to last Christmas, I gave you my arse, the very next day, you said I was gay, and so on and so forth. It was funny because we were working class so we read the Sun and had unenlightened views about things. Not like it is today.

Wizzard I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day (1973) I know Roy Wood was in ELO but he at least had the sense to leave, and clearly wasn't entirely without talent as Ball Park Incident demonstrates; but no-one sane wishes it could be Christmas every day, and glam rock hyperbole doesn't really excuse the idea. As a child in the seventies, I vaguely recall some light feature on our local news show about a man who celebrated Christmas every single day of the year. I don't remember how he financed this undertaking, but I don't doubt that the offending Wizzard single was striped onto the soundtrack of the piece at some point. Light-hearted magazine show chuckles aside, the man was clearly mental.

*: I will admit that, to their credit, ELO don't seem to have recorded a Christmas song so far as I'm aware - although admittedly I'm disinclined to check. I concede this information because it's Christmas, a time of goodwill unto all, even simpletons.