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11:47:00 AM EST
Hearing Feliz Navidad -- Jose Feliciano
Hateful Christmas Carols: An Audience Participation Entry
I wrote this up on my personal site the other day and it's become very popular there, so, I thought, my not just steal from myself and put it here? So here we are.
Your Christmas gift is the ability to expunge one highly annoying yet popular Christmas song from the history of the world. Which one is it?
The one I would expunge:
Words cannot express how truly annoying this song is. It's Guantanamo Bay torture technique annoying; it's the forced squat of Christmas tunes. It has nothing to do with its bilingual nature; it has to do with its utter lyrical and musical insipidness and the mad, crazed repetition of both, driving into your ear like a seasonally festive ice pick, stabbing merrily across your gray matter like a 1920s lobotomy scraper. Having said that, the fact the song is insipid in two entirely different languages does give it an extra lift above the many other truly annoying Christmas songs out there.
And of course I do suspect that -- aside from the seasonal inertia of Christmas tunes, in which the same sixteen songs get played over and over and over again just because they always have -- its bilingual nature is the only reason it persists on radio playlists; this is some former frat boy radio programmer's lazy idea of diversity -- well, this and Christina Augilera's version of "O Holy Night," 'cause she's, like, hot and all. On behalf of my Hispanic family members, including my wife and child, I am outraged. For God's sake, someone pester Los Lobos to get out there and give us some Christmas tunage.
I am happy for Mr. Feliciano that the persistence of this particular tune one month out of the year means he can pay his mortgage the other 11, but I suggest we provide the man with a lump sum payment that will care for him and his mortgage for the rest of their natural lives and then incinerate every last copy of this tune. He'll still have his version of "Light My Fire" to fall back on if things get tight.
Anyway, that's mine. What's yours?
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FYI to the person with the song about Momma Meeting Jesus tonight: It's called the Christmas Shoes.
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There's this country song... something about mommy meeting Jesus tonight... it has to be the most depressing thing I've ever heard... some radio stations play it three or four times an hour... just shoot me.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/ -
Oh easy. Hee Haw hee haw...it's Dominic the Donkey. AHHHHHH! Nothing against Italians, but really. That song is BAD.
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John, I feel like I've been attacked. I LOVE Feliz Navidad. My son and I have been known to sing it endlessly in our car! At the moment I'm wishing I had an email from you so that I could do a voice reply with multiple choruses of Feliz Navidad :)
I saw this entry earlier today and was so flabbergasted that you are so un-in-love-with this song, that I couldn't respond until my friend Jennifer (Xzasporated1) told me to rush over here and defend one of my favorites!!!!
Maybe I should sing it to you in person with my own Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel Bits breath ROFLOL
Vivian the defender of Feliz Navidad :) :)
11/9/05 9:12 PM