Christmas Pop songs thrived during the ’70s and ’80s and those two particular decades seemed to capture the spirit of the season perfectly as artists of the day translated the festive feeling into a handful of memorable tracks. After that period however, most attempts at a Christmas song have been appalling, there’s been an abundance of trashy covers with a smattering of original offal. So here’s a countdown of the 25 Worst Christmas Songs, think of this as an advent calendar of Xmas crap…

25

Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)

By The Darkness

Let’s begin with a shitty pastiche, parody, or whatever this thing wishes it was. This track thinks it’s simultaneously mocking and celebrating all those ’70s and ’80s Christmas Pop songs but ironically it can’t seem to capture the magic, jolliness, and catchiness of the sub-genre it’s referencing. With an obvious double entendre in the title, I assume Justin Hawkins thought this was clever…

24

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

By Tom Jones & Cerys Matthews

This song isn’t embarrassingly bad but it’s crap nevertheless. This overrated shite really used to get on my tits when it was first released, you couldn’t escape from the frigging thing, it was playing everywhere. A Welsh duo made up of an over-singer and an under-singer, with Cerys’ soft, childlike tones coupled with Jones’ booming clubland vocals, this song was apparently enough for the knicker-catching crooner to make a fully-fledged comeback. In my opinion, one of the worst renditions of the song, I’d stick with any of the Ray Charles versions…

23

Christmas Lights

By Coldplay

Like most other Coldplay songs, this subdued, piano-guitar-based track goes nowhere but into an underwhelming crescendo of nothingness. With lyrics about lost love and with quick mentions of Oxford Street and Elvis, the song is not very Christmassy (which is ironic because the line “it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all” features heavily in the track)…

22

Driving Home For Christmas

By Michael Ball or Stacey Solomon

How do you ruin a Chris Rea Christmas song? Sing it in a theatre-stage-stylee, that’s how. Michael “Friendly But Lame” Ball stripped this track of any of its mood and left it sitting on four concrete blocks…

How do you ruin a Chris Rea song… again? Sing it with no feeling in an amateur, wannabe-famous Pop way, and abruptly end words like “Christmas” for a jarring experience. Stacey Solomon took this song and drove it into a ditch…

21

Once Upon A Christmas Song

By Peter Kay as Geraldine McQueen

This shite was made by a once funny Peter Kay during his, what I like to call “shit period”. After creating and starring in the classic Phoenix Nights and That Peter Kay Thing, Kay for some unknown reason began appearing on telly as shite characters that couldn’t seem to decide whether they were mocking reality TV or conforming to it. In 2008, in a case of art imitating life (or life imitating art) Geraldine McQueen, a fake singing contestant on a fake reality show became quite popular despite her song being shit, it got pretty high up the charts too as I recall…

20

One More Sleep

By Leona Lewis

Remember when X Factor‘s Leona Lewis was touted as the “next big thing”? This was never going to happen because she had no star-quality (she literally had no “X Factor”) and the majority of her songs were forgettable ballads like this crappy Christmas ditty…

19

All I Want For Christmas

By Samantha Mumba or Fifth Harmony

Not content with ruining The Time Machine, mediocre Mumba set her sights on Christmas and f-ed up the once enjoyable Christmas song by Mariah Carey…

Ruining Mariah Carey’s song seems to be a Christmas tradition. Aside from Samantha Mumba, this girl band ruined the song too. Listen to the way one of them sings “fireplace” like a cat being squeezed (at approximately 1:11) for a taste of how shit this version really is…

18

Christmas Wrapping

By Spice Girls or The Saturdays

The noughties was definitely when remakes started to snowball, not just in film but in music too. This once decent song by The Waitresses has been ruined countless times, so here’s two of the lamest. A perfect example of a bad cover song…

17

Sleigh Ride

By Spice Girls

Another Christmas tragedy like Santa Clause getting run over by his own sleigh, The Spice Girls not content with one crap Christmas song made a couple. They covered “Sleigh Ride” but added nothing to it, nobody can out-do The Ronettes version…

16

Perfect Christmas

By S Club 7

Worse than The Spice Girls was this group consisting of what looked like a council estate youth club forced into a recording studio. This group made many dire contributions to Pop music but this was one of their worst since it dragged Christmas into their quest for shit-dom…

15

Last Christmas

By Billie Piper

With a face like an albino baboon and a voice to match, before, during, or after hooking-up with that prick Chris Evans (who cares when?) Piper released this festive fuckery, destroying the George Michael song in one foul swoop…

14

Fairytale Of New York

By Ronan Keating & Moya Brennan

How do you go about destroying a Christmas classic? You round up a squeaky-clean Boyzone singer, pair him up with an ex-Clannad folk singer, and make them sing a once credible song with no feeling whatsoever. Oh, and you remove the swear words so you don’t offend the sensibilities of your lame-arsed fans…

13

Shake Up Christmas

By Train

Aside from “Drops Of Jupiter”, Train made this shite, a corny-sounding Christmas track where they rhyme “this”, “wish” and “happiness” together to make some Pop-Rock pish…

12

Santa Clause Is Coming To Town & Mistletoe

By Justin Bieber

Like many pre-Christmas sales, here’s two for one. Any one of Justin Bieber’s crap Pop-R-N-B Christmas tunes are worthy of being mentioned so here they both are at number 12…

11

This Christmas

By Chris Brown

Here’s a horrible R’N’B mess by everyone’s favourite wifey-beater Chris Brown. It starts off Gospel-ish but once what sounds like a Bontempi organ kicks in, the song gets a whole lot worse with Brown pratting about in the street like someone having a fit…

10

Santa Tell Me

By Ariana Grande

At number 10, here’s some poppy bullshit by everybody’s favourite diva impersonator. Maybe she should have sung this in one of her other (better) voices…

9

8 Days Of Christmas

By Destiny’s Child

This track by Beyonce and her musical chairs group features some horrid late-nineties Pop production not to mention lyrics which include “diamond belly rings”. This is just tacky in every way…

8

My Only Wish This Year

By Britney Spears

Here’s some Christmas crap complete with Spears’ usual throaty vocals. My only wish this year is that the radio and music TV don’t play this garbage…

7

Christmas Time

By Backstreet Boys

With the gayest name and the straightest, most dullest fans in Pop, the Backstreet Boys really made some mediocre music and their Christmas offering is no different…

6

I Love Christmas

By Fast Food Rockers

Like hell warmed up and put into a Happy Meal, this utterly junk song from everyone’s not-so-favourite junk-food-based novelty group is simply horrid…

5

Christmas To Remember

By Gareth Gates

Remember that annoying “I only stutter when I’m not badly singing” bloke from Pop Idol? He fucked up music, then he fucked Katie Price, then he fucked off. Hearing his lame vocals still gives me flashbacks of that shit decade…

4

Have A Cheeky Christmas

By The Cheeky Girls

When it comes to the condemnation of so-called talent shows, this is what people mean. These two strange-looking, talentless twins somehow released a handful of songs despite being shite at singing. Pop Idol has a lot to answer for…

3

Walk This Sleigh

By Robbie Williams

Here’s a song by that cunt from Take That who for some strange reason thinks he’s credible, referencing Run-DMC and the like. This is pure festive landfill in every way…

2

Proper Crimbo

By Bo Selecta

Here’s that stubby twat from Leeds, Leigh Francis fucking up Christmas like he fucks up TV every time he appears on it. “Proper Crimbo” has his lame-arsed latex characters showing up trying to be funny, there’s even a pointless “Thriller” inspired intro. A shitty track which basically plugs his show, this is not Christmassy in the slightest and appearances by other celeb arse-twisters such as Chris Moyles and Jimmy Carr just make things a whole lot worse…

1

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

By Band Aid 30 or Band Aid 20 or Band Aid II

This song may not technically be as bad as some of the others on the list but as a cover song, it is definitely the most unwelcome. Although the original version contained some questionable lyrics, it was at least well-meaning and original. Exponentially worse than the 1984 version however, are these three shit-stained remakes. By slightly changing the lyrics a la Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind”, the meaning and sentiment was stripped from this ’80s Number 1 which resulted in three steaming number 2s. In each subsequent incarnation, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” included the worst singers of the time including some of the noughties’ shittiest singers. “Artists” including Will Young, Joss Stone, Ant & Dec and the aforementioned Justin Hawkins (of The Darkness) can be seen and heard canting about various problems in Africa – we’re making history don’t you know?!!! – is it possible to make history four times with the same song?

Releasing the same shit multiple times in an attempt to recapture the buzz of the original Live Aid concert, each of these efforts have been woeful. With lacklustre deliveries from Dido and mediocre vocals from the likes of One Direction, one even featured Dizzee Rascal doing a little rap (that wasn’t embarrassing in any way… ahem, ahem). With some singers over-vocalising and dancing in the videos, these twerps made the cause look like a joke, it’s supposed to be there to raise money not to showcase your “skills” as a performer.

Whether these three cover versions were for charity or not, Band Aid II, Band Aid 20, and Band Aid 30 have been some of the worst songs ever made, grouping together some of the most mediocre, untalented twats around and forcing them to essentially do a karaoke number in the name of so-called charity. What’s worse is that some radio stations and music television channels for some unknown frigging reason elect to play these versions instead of the original! It’s like hearing some drunken office party revellers ruining a Christmas track, not once, but three not-so-merry times…