The same time next year?
The great debate over which tune is best Christmas song is alive and well
Every year, ahead of the holiday season, a debate over the greatest Christmas song ever begins with the same songs being argued over again and again.
There’s Fairytale of New York by The Pogues. Sure, it may be the U.K.’s most played Christmas song of the 21st century, but what does it offer, really? A jumble of slurred lyrics, it’s quite a morose song, and it’s also long at four-plus minutes. Not to mention, it includes more than one problematic line.
BBC’s DJ Alex Dyke seemed to put it best when he said this week in a since-deleted tweet, “Radio, let’s ban Fairytale of New York this Christmas! ‘You’re a sl-t on junk, you scumbag, cheap lousy f----t’ — is this what we want our kids singing in the back of the car? It’s an offensive pile of down-market chav bilge. We can do better!”
There’s also Baby, It’s Cold Outside, which has been a hit since it debuted in the late 1940s. But over the last decade, the song has been steeped in controversy, its lyrics accused of depicting sexual harassment. In 2018, CBC Music removed it from rotation. After much public unrest, the network reversed their decision, however. The ongoing argument over the lyrics eventually motivated
John Legend and Kelly Clarkson to release a new version this past November that swaps the controversial lyrics for more innocuous ones. Here’s an excerpt: “So, really, I’d better scurry (your driver, his name is Murray).”
Thank you, but no.
Any discussion of Christmas classics has to include Wham!’s Last Christmas. With the recent release of the rom-com Last Christmas, which features a Wham! soundtrack (and a new, posthumous track from George Michael), this song isn’t about to leave the airwaves any time soon. And with the film hyping it up more than it has been in ages, it’s added fuel to the Whamageddon fire.
What is Whamageddon, you ask? A very simple game that begins on Dec. 1, and has only one rule: to make it as close to Christmas as you can without hearing Last Christmas. (Remixes and covers are, oddly, acceptable.)
Still, if the point of the contest is to avoid the song, it’s hard to consider it a favourite.
In the end, the best Christmas song is obvious: Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. Equal parts cheeky and romantic, it’s impossibly catchy. You can’t hear it without wanting to at least hum along.
Go ahead, you can vote it as the most annoying song all you want, the numbers will support my claim: It’s Carey’s bestselling single of all time (16 million copies to date), the 12th biggest single of all time, and has earned the singer a staggering $60 million in royalties. It will even be the subject of an upcoming Amazon documentary titled Mariah Carey is Christmas: The Story of All I Want For Christmas Is You.
If you disagree, I look forward to having this debate again — exactly one year from now.