The Search for Christmas Music that Doesn’t Suck

            Every year, starting earlier and earlier, it’s the same thing. The same god-awful songs emerge from the cesspool of “Christmas Past” to haunt us again and make our ears bleed. If you ever worked in retail, you know exactly what I mean. Starting as early as September, the same horrible songs played on loop for hours upon hours. It should be classified as torture. They could probably do this to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The call center job I had last year around this time was no exception. We were always tortured by horrible hold music no matter the time of year, but in December, they switched the bad 70’s and 80’s pop music to Christmas crap. At least they waited until December, and it was actually a slight relief for the first couple of days because it was at least different, but it didn’t take long before I was begging for the stale old hold music to come back. And they kept playing the Christmas music until after New Years!

            Christmas music is immortal. It comes back every year. No other songs from before the 1960’s get much airplay anywhere, but Christmas songs do. For a prime example: if “Baby it’s Cold Outside” weren’t a Christmas song, no one would be either attacking or defending this creepy rape song these days. It would have faded into obscurity as a product of its time, like it should have. But no, because it’s a Christmas song, it stays around way past its expiration date and in 2019 becomes something for liberals and conservatives to have pointless internet arguments about when they should be arguing about something more important.

            As the years go by, my loathing for Christmas only increases. I’ve had Christmas days ruined by family drama, I don’t have any religious reason to celebrate it anymore and would rather celebrate the Winter Solstice, and I have come to realize the holiday has been bled dry of any sort of meaning by greedy corporations. It’s Capitalismas, not Christmas, and certainly not Yule or Saturnalia. The magic is dead, and Wal-Mart and pals are feasting upon its corpse. Santa is but a corporate mascot. And no sappy, heartwarming Santa movie or Christmas special is ever going to bring the magic back. And I’ve grown more and more tired of the music. I hate hearing it. I hate Jingle Bells, I hate Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I hate every single Christmas carol. I have become a Grinch. All the noise, noise, noise! Bah, humbug. Can’t we just have a second Halloween instead?

            But, could it be that in spite of it all, good Christmas music still exists out there? Could it be that there exists Christmas music that doesn’t suck? It’s like searching for some mythical artifact, but, over the years, I have heard a few that don’t suck! Is it all going to be dark, drab, spooky goth music, you ask, knowing my tastes in music? Mostly! If they played these at department stores and on nonstop Christmas radio stations, I’d actually be okay with it. Let’s have a look at some Christmas songs that don’t make my ears bleed or make me want to take a baseball bat to the Christmas aisle at a grocery store.

Type O Negative – Red Water (Christmas Mourning)

             

Ah, good old Type O Negative. You can always count on them. They inject dark magic into everything they create. They've got a couple songs about Halloween, so why not improve another holiday with their music? October Rust is one of their best albums, nearly every song is entrancing. It is on this album we find our first Christmas song that doesn't suck. Red Water (Christmas Mourning) might be considered a Christmas song in name only, but oh well, it counts. The relaxing dark melody with Peter Steele’s voice is so captivating that it’s hard to pay attention to the lyrics themselves. It does talk about mistletoe and Christmas "mourn". It brings to mind cold, black snowy nights. It doesn't bring to mind stampedes at Black Friday sales, struggling to buy presents while having enough left of your paycheck for food, or any of the other negative aspects of this holiday. Don’t mind the abrupt ending though. Type O Negative just enjoys messing with their listeners.

Stereotype O Negative – Last Christmas

             

Continuing our theme, this here is from a Type O Negative cover band. They do a pretty good job sounding like them. It’s the best we’re going to get now that Peter Steele is sadly dead. And this cover of the Wham! song “Last Christmas” is a lot better than the original too, if you ask me. A song about having your heart broken on Christmas should be sad and dreary, not upbeat and festive. Whenever someone covers a song in the style of Type O Negative they always make it better. This band isn’t the only one to have done that. Give this one a listen.  

Unheilig – Kling Glöckchen Klingelingeling

             

Unheilig is a German "Neue Deutsche Härte" band (basically a subgenre of industrial metal), essentially the same genre as Rammstein, and they will sound very similar to Rammstein to the untrained ear. They did an entire Christmas album called Frohes Fest, which is honestly worth checking out for all the tracks. It’s Christmas music that doesn’t sound like Christmas music, and that’s the best type. They may throw in some jingling bells and the sounds of wind blowing, but it just adds to the wintry atmosphere in a way that’s not cringe-worthy. I’ll include two favorites of mine here in this blog. The first song is the only time you’ll hear someone (at least try to) make the word “klingelingeling” sound badass. It’s hilarious hearing anyone try to say that in such a gruff voice. I come back to it every year because it puts me in the mood for Winter Solstice and this time of year. Making it a true Christmas song that is immortal and always comes back, at least for me.

Unheilig – Oh Tannenbaum

             

“Oh Tannenbaum” is of course a famous German Christmas carol, known as “Oh Christmas Tree” in English. This is the best version of it. Trust me. It’s my second favorite song off the album. It’s like the Krampus version.

Fear – Fuck Christmas

             

This song is entirely too short, not even a minute, but it’s good to put on when you just feel fed up with Christmas. It’s an anti-Christmas song. There aren’t enough of those for us grinches who hate Christmas. "Don't despair, just because it's Christmas."

Weird Al Yankovic – The Night Santa Went Crazy

             

Weird Al’s Christmas songs still sound too much like Christmas songs for my current tastes, but eh, I’ll give them a pass. I grew up with this music after all, and it doesn’t suck, so it belongs on this list, even if I’d probably rather not listen to them too often; and if I am on some kind of Weird Al kick, I tend to skip the Christmas ones unless it is December. This song is off the album Bad Hair Day (the first CD I ever owned by the way) and tells the morbid tale of how Santa snapped and went on a murderous bloodthirsty shooting rampage. Something tells me this song wouldn’t be made today. It's from before there was a mass shooting every couple months in the United States. But most Christmas songs wouldn’t be made today, just look at “Baby it’s Cold Outside”. If Santa were real, you’d have to expect the events in this song to happen eventually. You think you’re stressed out? At least you aren’t delivering presents to all of the rich Christian children of the world. Luckily for him, Santa can ignore the poor, non-Christian ones.

Weird Al Yankovic – Christmas at Ground Zero

             

And here’s the other Weird Al Christmas song, about celebrating Christmas after a nuclear holocaust. Makes me think of the Fallout video games now. It actually made it onto my first ever mix tape from 1999, which I’ll be discussing on this blog next week.  Not a whole lot to say about this one really. It may have been more relevant during the Cold War, but who are we kidding? A nuclear war could happen tomorrow. India and Pakistan could attack one another and the dominoes would just fall from there. Or someone could sit on the button accidentally. Well, onto more uplifting topics.

1 Hour of Dark Christmas Music

             

In my search on YouTube for Christmas songs that don't suck, I came across a lot of “creepy” and “gothic” Christmas mixes like this. Most of them were still too Christmassy for me, but of the ones I looked at I found this one to be the best. It creates an atmosphere, and reminds me of the music of Danny Elfman. I would love to go to sleep listening to this on December 24^th.

            So that’s my list. Pretty short, although you could include every song of Unheilig’s Frohes Fest album and make it longer. You could probably add songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas too, they don't exactly suck, it's just that I find that movie a bit over-rated these days. Will I discover other Christmas songs that don’t fill me with loathing? Maybe someday. We’ll see if my favorite gothic music podcast Communion After Dark plays any Christmas songs I like this year, and I can update this blog post then. Got any other Christmas songs you think might be up my alley? Well if you're reading this, go ahead and comment on the blog, or comment on Facebook. It lets me know someone's actually reading my ramblings and makes me feel all warm and toasty inside.