Here's A List of Our Most-Hated Christmas Pop Songs—Plus the Good Ones

Not everyone can be Mariah Carey.

For every amazing pop Christmas album—a timeless album that worms its way into millions of holiday memories—there are many, many terrible ones, which maybe shake loose a few December dollars before becoming embarrassments to their creators.

In honor of local songwriter Ed Haynes' Crappy Jingles Christmas show at Mississippi Studios, we've compiled a list of our most-hated holiday songs. And because nobody wants to be Scroogey this time of year, we have suggestions for good songs in a similar style.

Lady Gaga, "Christmas Tree"

I'm a longtime Lady Gaga apologist. But there's simply no defense of this 2008 track, a tortured metaphor in which Ms. Gaga plays a sexualized tree being humped by an unnamed dendrophiliac ("Light me up, put me on top, let's fa-la-la-la/Oh, ho, a Christmas/My Christmas tree is delicious") to random bells, a misfiring synthesizer and the merciless clomp of an 808.

Instead: The Waitresses, "Christmas Wrapping" and The Pretenders, "2,000 Miles"

My hometown of Akron, Ohio, has given us not only the greatest basketball player of all time but these two New Wave gems, both of which rank among the top-five Christmas pop songs ever. MARTIN CIZMAR.

NewSong, "The Christmas Shoes"

How bad is this song? Well, it was the basis for a Lifetime movie starring Rob Lowe. In the song, a man sees a child telling a cashier that he would like to purchase shoes for his dying mom: "Could you hurry, sir?/Daddy says there's not much time/I want her to look beautiful/If Momma meets Jesus tonight." The man gives the kid money for the shoes and learns the true meaning of Christmas. The whole thing is a maudlin, self-indulgent mess in which the lead singer in the music video closes his eyes, rocks his head and takes a breath before nearly every note. It's awful. Then it gets worse. A chorus of children's voices starts singing as the whole shitshow crescendos into a mediocre youth-group performance while one off-pitch, little-boy voice stands out among them, ending the song.

Instead: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" by the Jackson 5

Mommy is alive and making out with a heavyset bearded man, and the only kid singing is Michael Jackson, who wouldn't have his own issues for another two decades. SOPHIA JUNE.

Bruce Springsteen, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town"

Sure, you could make a case that the Boss's growlingly gastrointestinal delivery—in which every "Santa" seems forcefully squeezed past a painful hemorrhoid–magically re-creates the Christmas miracle of fat St. Nick going down a chimney. But I call toxic bullshit. If there's one principle guiding every Bruce Springsteen song I've ever loved, it's that Santa Claus ain't never fuckin' comin'. Bruce's jazz-handsy telethon enthusiasm not only makes all showmanship seem like condescension, it makes all heart seem like a lie.

Instead: Big Star, "Jesus Christ"

This is not a substitute but an antidote: despair disguised as hope that makes hope seem possible in a year when everyone's in despair. When Alex Chilton sings, "And the wrong shall fail/And the right prevail," you feel it in your breaking heart that this is a miracle he doesn't expect anytime soon. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

She & Him, "The Christmas Song"

"The Christmas Song" has become clichéd and tired, and it never sounded wearier than it does coming out of the mouth of Zooey Deschanel, who informs us that Santa's on his way with all the enthusiasm of a 12th-grader gearing up for the SAT. Do yourself a favor and don't play this for any actual tiny tots: It'll make them lose consciousness before those chestnuts start roasting.

Instead: She & Him, "I'll Be Home for Christmas"

This is just about the most cloyingly depressing holiday tune ever written. Yet by picking up the pace and combining the wistful lyrics with her buttery vocals, Deschanel remakes the song as something energetic and soulful. And she manages to sing, "I'll be home for Christmas/If only in my dreams," without sounding too gloomy. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON.

Band Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

From what us millennials know about the 1980s, it was a decade free of irony, a time when comedy consisted of people getting hit in the balls and making their eyes cross, or a cocaine addict screaming frothy-mouthed into a microphone about how women are soul-sucking demons. Which makes "Do They Know It's Christmas?"—a song organized by the arch-earnest Bob Geldof and Bono, in which two large handfuls of feather-haired pop stars plaintively ask whether the people of Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian nations on earth, know it is Christmastime—a pretty good idea then, and a pretty bad one now.

Instead: Wham!, "Last Christmas"

Is this what authentic emotion feels like? Do feelings even exist in the age of memes? I don't know; my capacity for human interaction has been destroyed by the internet. But this song is a snapshot of the kind of earnestness I crave: a gorgeous, stripped-down synth-pop classic that would pass at any time of year, overlaid with George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley's wistful tales of winter lovers past. MATTHEW SINGER.

Paul McCartney, "Wonderful Christmastime"

Y'know when one of your older relatives visits for the holidays and gives the youngest kid in the house a toy that makes some obnoxious noise, and no one can take it away from him because he'll throw a fit? That must have been how the McCartney family felt when Sir Paul unwrapped Daddy's First Synthesizer—a gift from fucking Ringo, probably—and immediately poked out the chintzy-ass chords that would end up permanently infecting every mall, grocery store and, if you're me, the Target Christmas CD your mom bought in the mid-'90s and still plays all season long. The song has its apologists, but the only reason anyone feels the need to apologize is because it's by one of the world's greatest songwriters and not, like, a self-recorded novelty single from some earnest dad in suburban Minnesota that gets shared every year as an ironic meme, which is the fate it truly deserves.

Instead: The Darkness, "Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)"

It's got a ripping lead riff, a children's choir, a video featuring the band dressed in yuletide spandex shredding in the snow, and a British dick joke in the title. Clearly, the Darkness is better than the Beatles. Don't @ me. MATTHEW SINGER.

The Ed Haynes Show: A Crappy Jingles Christmas is at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., on Friday, Dec. 23. 8 pm. $15. All ages.