LimeWire Music Blog

It’s tough enough to make it through the Christmas season just listening to those same ubiquitous chestnuts you were sick of when you were six years old. But things get even worse when legit pop, rock, hip-hop, and R&B artists try to hip up the holidays by cutting “cool” seasonal tunes that in the end will only make you wretch and roil all the more. Offering you the other side of the coin from our recent 12 Christmas Cuts That Don’t Suck playlist, here’s the most horrific plan we can think of for counting down those dozen days of Christmas, one terrifying tune at a time.

1. No Doubt – “Oi To The World”
Sometime before Gwen Stefani decided she’d rather be Madonna than the frontwoman for a bunch of smelly, ska-loving dudes, No Doubt showed us all how “punk” they were on this self-consciously irreverent holiday tune that just tried too damn hard.

2. Snoop Dogg w/Bishop Magic Don Juan & Jake the Flake – “A Pimp’s Christmas Song”
Pimp worship in hip-hop is nothing new, and is an egregious enough phenomenon all by itself, but when Snoop calls on the services of Pimp godfather Bishop Magic Don Juan and paints Santa as a seasonal pimp daddy, a new low is reached.

3. Stevie Nicks – “Silent Night”
You know that goat-like vibrato that’s always been so irritating even on Stevie’s best material? Guess what — it doesn’t get any more endearing when she’s laying into the loo-oo-ooong notes of a song you never needed to hear again to begin with.

4. Aaron Neville – “O Little Town of Bethlehem”
See above, but substitute “dyspeptic warble” for “goat-like vibrato.”

5. Dar Williams – “Christians and Pagans”
Okay, we’ll admit having little love Williams’ overly precious folkie ramblings from the get-go, but when she tries to redeem the vomit-inducing political correctness of this tune with “humor” and then attempts to make the whole thing heartwarming anyway by giving it a holiday setting, it just puts unreasonable demands on our gag reflex.

6. Lou Rawls – The Little Drummer Boy”
Let’s face it, everyone’s sick of “The Little Drummer Boy” in the first place. So how should a singer deal with that fact? By staying the f@#$k away from it, not by trying to make the damn thing swing, for God’s sake.

7. Joan Baez – “What Child Is This”
You thought the archetypal earnest folkie sounded pompous and po-faced singing secular tunes? Wait till you hear what happens when she gets religion.

8./9./10. “Last Christmas” – three-way tie between Ashley Tisdale, Taylor Swift, and Jimmy Eat World
This holiday heartbreak tune was barely tolerable when Wham! originated it in the ’80s, but turning it into teen-pop, cardboard country, and angsty emo,  as in the hands of Tisdale, Swift, and the Jimmys, respectively, goes way beyond pushing one’s luck.

11. Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart
It’s impossible to narrow this one down to just one track. If he’d simply made some rootsy, Dad-rock holiday album it would have merely been dull, but when he inexplicably decided to fulfill his completely unironic desire to be the Pat Boone of singer/songwriters for an entire album, Dylan found a whole sleighful of new ways to spell “fail.”

12. Rod Stewart – TBA
Come on, you know it’s just a matter of time. The guy has spent the last seven years making four-count-’em-four unlistenable albums of jazz/pop standards, one of ’60s/’70s soft-rock slow jams, and one of sub-Michael McDonald R&B covers. When it happens — and it will — don’t say we didn’t warn you.