More about: Christmas

We went through a lot researching this piece. The rocketing highs. The troubling lows. The truth is that the landscape of Christmas songs is a rocky one fraught with some appalling ickiness and more than its fair share of misplaced horniness. 

Not many of the songs we listened to in our pursuit of the worst Christmas tunes could be reasonably described as "good". That being said, we decided not to add every hyper-sickly song that made us gag to the list, if only because we would have been here until the end of time.

What we did do though was land on some of the most pelvic floor-clenchingly bad Christmas songs that have ever been written, recorded and released. Think: there were whole teams of people who okayed these songs at every stage! Here are 11 of the worst.

'Naughty List' - Liam Payne with Dixie D'Amelio

Liam Payne - he of “I’ll probably do your ass in the car" fame - has ploughed (if you will) further into his role as the most trashy ex-member of One Direction with this 2020 special. 'Naughty List', as you might glean just from its title, follows last year's LP1 in its mission to make sex into an unsavoury activity that only people who are very disturbed in the mind partake in. It also introduces something that many of the songs on this list suffer from: that paint-by-numbers songwriting syndrome. 

John Denver - 'Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)'

There aren't many Christmas songs that feature alcohol and spousal abuse. You might think that was a good thing, and it turns out you'd be right. John Denver was best known for his folksy, country-lite ballads and when he released Rocky Mountain Christmas - a compilation of Christmas songs - in 1975, you'd have been forgiven for assuminng that it would be a collection of cheesy classics. And indeed it was. The exception being this unremittingly bleak 2 minutes 54 seconds that chronicles the pleas of a  seven year old boy to his drunken father. Listen only if you're in a fantastically cheery mood. And be prepared for that to change. (words by Steve Mersereau)

Sia - 'Ho Ho Ho'

Delivering the titular 'ho ho ho' as if someone has a knife pressed close to her throat, Sia's track is just one of several from 2018's Everyday Is Christmas that could have made the cut. Good, perhaps, for children in the saccharine throes of their first conscious festive season. Hell for the parents who are pressed to keep putting it on. 

Britney Spears - 'My Only Wish (This Year)'

We understand, okay? It's hard to write a good Christmas song. No one's written a blinder in several decades, and even then they get old very fast. That's no excuse, we venture to suggest, for something as desperately insipid as this, which is a patent attempt to usurp Mariah's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. More points docked for the fact that Britney rarely puts a foot wrong. 

Lou Monte - 'Dominick The Donkey'

A song brought to fame by Chris Moyles on his Radio 1 breakfast show a few years back, 'Dominick the Donkey' is a terribly bad yet infectious Christmas song which borders on the bizarre. The song talks about Santa Claus installling the help of a donkey to help deliver presents to kids in the foothills of Italy as his reindeer are unable to climb (yet they can fly). Albeit a pretty bad song, it is actually pretty catchy with its chirpy chorus. (words by Ryan McConnell)

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing - 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Comfort And Oi!)'

There should be a prize, surely, for Song That Most Sounds Like A Horrible Histories Ditty But Isn't. If there was, then this interlude - taken from the equally as bad 2010 EP A Very Steampunk Christmas - would win by some considerable distance. 

The Jackson 5 - 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'

Remove the glass-shattering children's pitch of young Jackson's voice and the humdrum plod of the instrumentals and consider (just for a moment) the narrative arc of 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'. A woman is having it away with someone (possibly her own husband) in the living room while her young child watches on. Sinister enough. But then the tickling begins! "Then I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus" Michael sings as his siblings chime in with the ominous rejoinder "Tickle, tickle." Chilling. 

McFly - 'Deck The Halls'

We don't like to speak ill of the nicest boys in pop, but they certainly may have asked for it with this rendition of already-annoying festive staple 'Deck The Halls'. The only redemptive part of the whole debacle is that the song is mercifully only one minute and thirty-three seconds long. 

Girls Aloud - 'Not Tonight Santa'

Enough with the Father Christmas shagging. The festive horniness! We've had enough. "I'll let you peek inside my stocking, if you show me yours" Girls Aloud sing in a resentful chorus on this half-arsed guitar pop song which takes lyrical foreplay to the next wincingly-bad level. 

Backstreet Boys - 'Christmas Time'

Christmas should be about spending time with family and friends, giving, and in some circles, going to church. Having said that, if those good intentions get out of hand, as they do on Backstreet Boys' 'Christmas Time', we as a society could really do with hurrying the season's decline into commercial Armageddon. This song is as saccharine, schmaltzy, cliché and cringey as it is possible for a song to get and not only that, but it is also out of tune. 

The Platters - 'All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth'

A much-covered classic with a title that could easily make up part of your Yorkshire Granddad's memories from wartime. What makes this one worse than some of the others? The way it's performed, as if the frontperson have themselves lost their baby teeth. Make it stop!

More about: Christmas