LimeWire Music Blog

This time of year is always tough on the ears of music lovers. We’re assaulted with a nonstop barrage of hackneyed holiday standards, irritating seasonal “satire,” and a ceaseless stream of sad attempts at making Christmas music cool. Well, you need keep your head buried beneath a sound-absorbent pile of used Santa suits no longer, because we’ve mapped out a tune-a-day plan for you to keep a song in your heart throughout the 12 days of Christmas without having a coronary. Just don’t expect any dewy-eyed odes to tinsel and mistletoe in this sonic Christmas stocking.

1. The Kinks – “Father Christmas”
Hailing from the period when the Kinks were putting their pastoral-pop past behind them and adopting a more punky sound — hell, they laid the groundwork for punk years before with their earliest hits — this tune finds Ray Davies giving Santa a good kicking at the hands of some sassy street kids.

2. The Everly Brothers – “Christmas Eve Can Kill You”
This early-’7os country-tinged track by Don and Phil is as far from tidings of comfort and joy as you can get, depicting a ragged, weary, lonesome soul freezing on the side of the road, on a lonesome Christmastime trek to nowhere for nobody.

3. Charles Brown – “Merry Christmas Baby”
The cool-croonin’, piano-tickling Brown brings his bluesy bag to the holiday party, but this is no downhearted trip, because he has zeroed in on the things that make Christmas worthwhile — good music on the radio and a little bit of lovin’.

4. The Pogues/Kirsty MacColl – “Fairytale of New York”
Perhaps the greatest anti-love duet ever, this seasonal saga of drunken debauchery gives Kirsty MacColl a chance to lighten Shane MacGowan’s vocal load while lovingly excoriating his booze-soaked butt.

5. Big Star – “Jesus Christ”
Just to prove it’s not entirely true that all the sweetness and light left Big Star along with Chris Bell, this jubilant celebration of that kid in the manger peeks out brightly amid all those doomy Third/Sister Lovers tunes.

6. Tom McRae – “Wonderful Christmastime”
As unbearably unctuous as Paul McCartney’s original, peppy, synth-driven version may be, McRae deconstructs the song with a molasses-paced, piano-based arrangement that’s more mournful than merry. Subversion at its best.

7. James Brown – “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto”
It never hurts to get on the good foot at Christmas time, and this cut’s got the added attraction of the Godfather of Soul commanding St. Nick to get street-real for the holiday season.

8. Chip Taylor – “Christmas In Jail”
This harrowing, Willie Nelson-with-a-hangover tune about a man behind bars on 12/25 due to a DWI conviction should be enough to convince even the most anti-Christmas listeners that things could always be worse.

9. Tom Lehrer – “A Christmas Carol”
Long before Weird Al or any lesser lights appeared on the scene, the O.G. of musical satirists skewered the hypocrisy and materialsim of the holidays with a sharp pen and a lust for laughs.

10. Miles Davis – “Blue Xmas”
Cult crooner/Schoolhouse Rock tunesmith Bob Dorough is the singer/lyricist for this Gil Evans-arranged Miles Davis track’s downright misanthropic massacre of all things Christmas. Here’s your chance to swing hard while you’re stomping on Santa’s beard.

11. Willie Nelson – “Pretty Paper”
When it comes to existential ennui, Willie had it all worked out when Morrissey was still in diapers. For proof, check out this laceratingly lonesome lament for a lost love amid the tinsel and trappings of Christmas.

12. Ernest Tubb – “Blue Christmas”
Nearly a decade before Elvis turned it into a slow-burning rock ‘n’ roll classic, Ernest Tubb croaked out the original version of the ultimate mistletoe-and-misery tune.