This holiday season, let’s look at the worst, wackiest, and most perverted Christmas songs ever recorded. Barely scratching the surface of vinyl and tape releases that have accumulated dust over the past decades, this compilation is the tip of the always-unpleasant iceberg for your listening displeasure.
One top fave that makes the rounds every year is a self-released nugget from 1979 by Elmo and Patsy, a married couple who made this one hit blunder recording titled Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. The original country-styled clunker morphed into a Hollywood feature film that nobody ever saw. Willie Nelson even recorded the song for a forgettable Christmas album. A classic you can smell is Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo right out of the South Park cartoon series Commode; it's a big fun-filled double flusher. There’s nothing jolly about a singing turd wearing a Santa hat.
Speaking of stinky songs coming from the annals of the annual John Waters Christmas Show Extravaganza, Here Comes Fatty Claus, a crappy tune about Santa and his big bag of feces. It’s a shitty ditty guaranteed to make you cringe in a festive way. Without being anal or analytical, the only thing worse than explosive diarrhea is Santa’s farting reindeer. And what holiday would be complete without Tiny Tim warbling Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer? I enjoy the vocal styling of Tiny Tim. But, like anything weird, it’s a strange taste like enjoying novelty songs about excremental acts and farting, even with ukulele accompaniment.
Lux Interior, the late lead singer for The Cramps, made a holiday-themed mixtape, Lux Interior Xmas tape. It’s a nice compilation of everything from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to the Ventures. I recently discovered a clip titled, Are you ready to jingle your bells? (Warning extremely explicit sexual references.) The woman in the video is a little person in a wheelchair. It could be right out of a scene from a David Lynch film. In her defense, she was set up. Then there’s Jingle Balls, a rollicking parody of the original version involving herniated vertebrae and such. Testicles and scrotum, beware. You have been warned.
“Jingle Balls” is the novelty song released in 2001 by a guy named John Valby, but it really sounds more like the 1950s. It sounds somewhere between a lousy limerick and a bad parody, caroling monologue. Even the cover art looks right out of the 1950s style. There are so many other songs that are not on my fave list, like Bing Crosby’s vintage rendition of White Christmas or, worse still, the Bing butchering a duet with David Bowie on “The Little Drummer Boy.” Pure gross vibes.
Let’s skip the dog barking along with yet another instrumental version of Jingle Bells and the obnoxious Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon Xmas covers. People singing after inhaling helium might be funny for a second, but not an entire album. A real kid's favorite from my generation was The Three Stooges’ All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. Another silly, surreal Christmas song from those stooges is I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. I vaguely remember a movie about the Three Stooges saving Santa Claus. I couldn’t find anything. It could’ve been the band Kiss saving Santa. But it’s only more useless trivia. Who wishes they could forget The Kmart in-store Christmas Muzak recorded here circa 1974, K Mart. Then there’s Root Boy Slim doing Xmas at K Mart. It's certain to displease the entire family and no fun for you, too. There’s a corporate glut of weird festive music that’s forgotten, and rightly so, by the masses of people who get sentimental over the holiday season. Who am I to say that one bad Christmas tune can ruin the spirit of the happy birthday celebration for baby Jesus? If you believe that kind of stuff.
Try out Iggy Pop's version of White Christmas. Or check out James Brown’s Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto. Talk about extremes. Here’s Frank Zappa doing an instrumental Xmas Values and another Zappa oldie from the Mothers of Invention about plastic presents under the tree on Uncle Bernie’s Farm. Here’s Captain Beefheart serenading us with There ain’t no Santa Claus. Here’s James Chance celebrating Christmas with Satan. And another from Tiny Tim Santa’s Got the AIDS for Christmas. I’ll wrap it up here with my own contribution to the spirit of this season with a timely tune titled Eat the Rich for Christmas. Eat the rich for Christmas. There’s plenty of them around.