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10:16:00 AM EST
Hearing Last Christmas -- Wham!
Weekend Assignment #142: Kill These Christmas Songs
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and it's beginning to sound like Christmas too. Which makes this Weekend Assignment particularly trenchant. This is something I did elsewhere a couple years ago, and the response was good enough that I think is worth asking here:
Weekend Assignment #142: Your Christmas/Holiday gift is the ability to expunge one highly
annoying yet popular Christmas/Holiday song from the history of the world.
Which one is it?
Extra Credit: Fruitcake: Ever actually eat any?
The Christmas song 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.
Fruitcake: You know, I don't think I have ever eaten any fruitcake. I guess I'll have to try some. Just soI can say I have.
You're up: Expunge one annoying Christmas/Holiday song! Forever! Write up which one you'd give the eternal boot on your blog or journal, and then come back here and leave a link. We'll be making a list, checking twice, and then tossing it out and rejoicing. It should be fun.
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Not sure if I'm in time to sneak this one in, or not, but here it is, O great Blogfather.
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/entrie s/2173
-Paul -
I would kill any rendition of "The Little Drummer Boy." As a sixth grade choir member I had to sing this song over and over and over again until my rubber bands snapped on my braces during a particularly enunciated "PA-RUM-PA-PUM-PUM!"
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I would kill - 'Simply having a Wonderful Christmastime' by Paul McCartney... oh how the mighty fell on that one!
be well,
Dawn -
Step Into Christmas by Bernie Taupin and Elton John...shame on two great talents who blew it on this song. I'd rather step in steaming dog poop.
12/12/06 10:21 AM