Christmas supposedly represents the season of goodwill and pleasure to all males, however it may be a dismal expertise for some. It could be that you simply’re lacking pals and family members you’ve both misplaced or will in any other case be unable to see over the vacation – however it doesn’t must be something so dramatic as that. Maybe you’ve simply heard the schmaltziest of Christmas songs one time too many, and it’s turned you off Christmas perpetually? In that case, then worry not. If it’s starting to really feel far an excessive amount of like Christmas, we’ve got a treatment. The 20 greatest anti-Christmas songs can’t fail to ship Santa and his elves packing.
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20: The Fall – No Xmas For John Quays
When you’re dreaming of a curmudgeonly Christmas, then few musicians match the invoice higher than The Fall’s late frontman, Mark E Smith. Beginning as he meant to go on, his band’s 1979 debut album, Reside At The Witch Trials, included “No Xmas For John Quays”: a spirit-dampening post-punk romp, with MES railing cryptically about each Christmas (“The “X” in “Xmas” is a substitute crucifix for Christ”) and junkies, whereas his band mercilessly caned the identical riff for nigh-on 5 minutes.
19: The Damned – There Ain’t No Sanity Clause
With their 1980 single “There Ain’t No Sanity Clause,” The Damned had one eye fastened firmly on the profitable festive market. But, though the anthemic music is a proper previous knees-up, its highest chart peak remains to be a lowly No.97, regardless of a number of reissues. The music’s Grinch-like title hasn’t helped its trigger, although it truly derives from the Marx Brothers’ film A Night time At The Opera, wherein Groucho makes an attempt to elucidate a enterprise contract’s “sanity clause” to Chico. The latter responds with: “You can’t fool me – there ain’t no Santy clause!”
18: Gruff Rhys – Slashed Wrists This Christmas
Songs about suicide makes an attempt don’t usually characteristic on Christmas playlists, however this ultra-melancholic, but beautifully-crafted ballad from Tremendous Furry Animals’ frontman stood out on 2011’s BBC-released An Different Christmas, alongside different notable festive naysayers equivalent to The Futureheads’ “Christmas Was Better In The 80s,” Denim’s “I Will Cry At Christmas” and Sufjan Stevens’ “That Was The Worst Christmas Ever.”
17: All Time Low – Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass!
As U.S. emo-rockers All Time Low clearly perceive, breaking apart along with your important different could be very prone to burst your bubble at Christmas. The Maryland quartet launched this plaintive anthem as a standalone single after their 2011 album, Soiled Work, peaked contained in the Prime 10 of the Billboard 200. Its heartfelt lyric (“When I gave you my heart, you ripped it apart like wrapping-paper trash”) and livid refrain have a common attraction. Sadly, the music’s sentiments will in all probability by no means exit of trend.
16: Brenda Lee – Christmas Will Be Simply One other Day
The enduring Georgia-born star Brenda Lee is synonymous with the vacation season due to her evergreen basic, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”. Her signature hit was, nonetheless, simply one among many festive treats to be discovered on Merry Christmas From Brenda Lee: a U.S. Prime 10 hit launched by means of Decca Data in 1964. The album revisited selection Christmas fare equivalent to “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Winter Wonderland,” but additionally included “Christmas Will Be Just Another Day”: a wistful ode to misplaced love and loneliness which Lee delivered with dignity to spare.
15: Albert King – Santa Claus Needs Some Lovin’
Duty should weigh closely on Santa Claus, who covers extra miles in a single evening than most individuals do in a 12 months’s price of commuting. But, till Albert King recorded the supremely funky “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’” (one of many many highlights of Stax’s 2007 compilation Christmas In Soulsville) hardly anybody spared a thought for a way the large man’s hectic supply schedule should wreak havoc on his love life. Right here, nonetheless, the blues legend displays Santa’s frustration with Christmas when he sings, “I don’t want no turkey, don’t care about no cake/I just want you to come here Mama, ’fore the children wake.”
14: Hollywood Undead – Christmas In Hollywood
Controversial, L.A.-based rap-rock fusionists Hollywood Undead all put on masks and use pseudonyms, however the mystique did nothing to forestall their 2008 debut album, Swan Songs, from going double-platinum within the US. The band is famend for his or her hedonistic stance, so it’s no shock that once they tackled the festive season with “Christmas In Hollywood” (“Santa’s back up in the hood/So meet me under the mistletoe, let’s f__k!”) they urged us to over-indulge and neglect the implications.
13: Danny Elfman – Kidnap The Sandy Claws
Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated Halloween-Christmas movie, The Nightmare Earlier than Christmas (1993), was initially deemed “too scary for kids” by Disney, however it grew to become a field workplace smash and was nominated for the Academy Award for Greatest Visible Results – a primary for an animated movie. One other of its strengths was composer Danny Elfman’s evocative soundtrack, which included good, off-beat tracks equivalent to “Kidnap The Sandy Claws” – as catchy an ode to kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Santa Claus as you might probably think about.
12: Huge Star – Jesus Christ
The jury’s nonetheless out on what Huge Star chief Alex Chilton’s motives had been when he recorded what appears to be an out-and-out Christmas music for Huge Star’s shambolic, however incessantly good Third – a challenge that remained unfinished when his cult power-pop outfit imploded in 1974. Chilton delivers the hymnal lyric (“Royal David’s City was bathed in the light of love”) and the music’s stirring refrain with obvious sincerity, however as different Third highlights equivalent to “Thank You Friends” are soaked in sarcasm, it’s probably ‘Jesus Christ’ could have been anti-Christmas in design. It’s a doozy, regardless, and the anomaly solely provides to the music’s enduring attraction.
11: blink-182 – I Gained’t Be House For Christmas
A stalwart anti-Christmas anthem, blink-182’s “I Won’t Be Home For Christmas” makes completely no bones about its Scrooge-like stance, with the Californian pop-punk legends sneering by means of strains equivalent to “It’s time to be nice to the people you can’t stand all year/I’m growing tired of all this Christmas cheer” earlier than breaking out the baseball bats. Curiously, the music was significantly effectively acquired in Canada, the place it remained at No.1 for 5 consecutive weeks in 2001.
10: Loretta Lynn – Christmas With out Daddy
Launched by Decca in 1966, Loretta Lynn’s Nation Christmas album stylishly blended authentic songs with covers of festive staples equivalent to “Frosty The Snowman” and the ever-present “White Christmas”. Surprisingly, regardless of widespread crucial reward (with Billboard sarcastically declaring it “great programming material for country music stations which will create high sales”), Nation Christmas did not chart, however it’s nonetheless a improbable file, and its blue’n’lonesome “Christmas Without Daddy” is an unrelenting tear-jerker.
9: Fall Out Boy – Xmas Shoot Your Eye Out
A heartfelt semi-acoustic rebuke to an untrue ex-lover, Fall Out Boy’s “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out” (“The gifts you’re receiving from me will be one awkward silence and two hopes you’ll cry yourself to sleep”) clearly hates Christmas from the center. The band initially donated it to Immortal Data’ 2003 compilation A Santa Trigger: It’s A Punk Rock Christmas, launched for AIDS charities, and it was later included as a bonus observe on Fall Out Boy’s self-explanatory Believers By no means Die: Biggest Hits assortment in 2009.
8: EELS – Christmas Is Going To The Canine
A sometimes tasty slice of off-kilter alt-pop from Mark “E” Everett, the rousing however little-known “Christmas Is Going To The Dogs” was included on the soundtrack for Ron Howard’s suitably anti-festive How The Grinch Stole Christmas, in 2000, and later took its place amongst a collection of equally thrilling offcuts on EELS’ sardonically-titled Ineffective Trinkets rarities assortment, launched in 2005.
7: Sparks – Thank God It’s Not Christmas
Sparks’ marvelous breakthrough album, Kimono My Home (1974), included their signature hit, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us” but additionally phenomenal tracks such because the Albert Einstein tribute “Talent Is An Asset” and the fantastic, widescreen pop of “Thank God It’s Not Christmas.” That includes a sometimes wry Ron Mael lyric, the latter music is as dramatic and memorable as any anti-Christmas tirade you’ll hear. As vocalist Russell Mael mentioned in 2014, “When Yuletime approaches, we give you our tribute to every day of the year that doesn’t fall on the 25th of December.”
6: Greg Lake – I Consider In Father Christmas
Emerson Lake & Palmer mainstay Greg Lake launched his solo profession with 1975’s memorable “I Believe In Father Christmas,” which peaked at No.2 within the U.Okay., behind Queen’s legendary “Bohemian Rhapsody”. A festive staple ever since, “I Believe In Father Christmas” was rapidly categorized as a Christmas music, however Lake truly meant it as a protest music concerning the overt commercialization of the festive season. Penned by Pete Sinfield, the music’s barbed lyric (“Hallelujah, Noel, be it heaven or hell/The Christmas we get, we deserve”) rapidly bears this out.
5: Nat “King” Cole – The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot
Nat “King” Cole recorded a swathe of festive perennials equivalent to “Deck The Halls,” “Silent Night” and plenty of extra, however he additionally recorded one among Christmas’ most heart-wrenching songs, “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.” Initially written in 1937 and in addition recorded by Vera Lynn, Cole’s definitive model of this achingly unhappy ballad (“He sent a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum/It broke his little heart when he found Santa hadn’t come”) appeared on the flip of his 1956 hit, the notably extra mainstream-friendly “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You).”
4: King Diamond – No Presents For Christmas
Metallic – be it black, thrash or another kind – is maybe the style most suited to carving out memorably darkish anti-Christmas songs, so it’s excessive time we saluted King Diamond’s “No Presents This Christmas.” The trailblazing Danish outfit’s first single from 1985, this tough’n’heavy blitzkrieg started with a parody of“Jingle Bells” after which drove Panzer tanks throughout Christmas cheer. Rightly, it’s nonetheless considered one of many band’s signature songs.
3: Kate Nash – I Hate You This Christmas
The standout observe from the U.Okay. singer-songwriter’s 2013 EP, Have Religion With Kate Nash This Christmas, “I Hate You This Christmas” initially appeared fairly perky till the refrain (“It’s Christmas once again, but you’re f__king one of my friends!”) kicked in – after which the music descended into hell-hath-no-fury territory in no unsure phrases. As Nash informed NME on the time of the EP’s launch, “‘I Hate You This Christmas’ is about a break-up ruining your holiday, really, someone cheating on you and going home and being embarrassed to tell your parents. Being broken-hearted at Christmas sucks!”
2: Miles Davis – Blue Xmas (To Whom It Could Concern)
Caustic, cynical, and nonetheless effortlessly cool, “Blue Xmas (To Whom it May Concern)” was the brainchild of the enduring Miles Davis and jazz vocalist Bob Dorough, who embraced the season’s draw back on this 1962 reduce constructed on swinging rhythms and moody horns. Initially launched on a compilation titled Jingle Bell Jazz (which additionally featured Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck), the observe included a scything critique of festive commercialism (“all the waste, all the sham”) and a verse regarding homelessness, which – tragically – stays all too related at this time.
1: Spinal Faucet – Christmas With The Satan
They are saying the Satan has all one of the best tunes, and that’s arduous to disclaim as we attain the highest spot of our 20 greatest anti-Christmas songs with a quantity singing the praises of Beelzebub himself. We’re, in fact, right here to genuflect on the altar of faux-metal heroes Spinal Faucet, who (actually) went to hell and again in developing this monstrously good ode to a Satanic Christmas (“The elves are dressed in leather and the angels are in chains/The sugar plums are rancid and the stockings are in flames”) and famously debuted it on Saturday Night time Reside in 1984. It’s up in opposition to some stiff competitors right here, however finally, in terms of anti-festive anthems, “Christmas With The Devil” is the one one which goes all the best way as much as 11.
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