The 20 worst Christmas songs ever inflicted on humankind (according to our editors)

If you’ve ever listened to the 1984, 2004 and 2014 recordings back to back, you’ll know that there is, in fact, a perverse comfort to the original version of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. Sure, it’s woefully wrong about Africa’s geography and climate, and pointing out the song’s colonialist overtones has become a festive cliché in itself, but at least it doesn’t feature an over-zealous guitar solo from The Darkness’s Justin Hawkins (2004) or an Ellie Goulding jumpscare (2014). I’m choosing to pretend the 2024 Ultimate Mix – which combines the best (?) of the three recordings and makes some truly inexplicable production choices along the way – doesn’t exist, and I suggest you do the same. 

Every year, Michael Bublé defrosts himself and crawls out of the woodwork to make his year’s earnings. I get it, he has to pay the rent somehow, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear his insipid, overly-autotuned voice slipping out of every M&S store’s speaker in town. There’s a faux-cosiness to Bublé’s festive music that simply makes my skin crawl; it’s all twee, with no real feeling. And that’s not what Christmas should be about, you hear me? 

This song reminds me of the NOW That’s What I Call Christmas! CD compilation my parents would play in the car every year throughout my childhood. The moment I heard the opening few seconds I’d ferociously yell at them to skip it. And I still maintain that mentality. Why? Because the lyrics are so very uninspired in comparison to anything else McCartney has ever written and the annoyingly catchy production is just painful. It lacks the roaring guitars of The Darkness, the stupidity of Slade and quite frankly, we all deserve better. Yes, it also features on our list of the best Christmas songs ever written. No, we won’t be taking questions at this time. 

All Christmas songs are cash-ins, but some feel like bigger cash-ins than others – like the Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas’ attempt at an indie rock Christmas banger with ‘I Wish It Was Christmas Today’. Casablancas clumsily tumbles through the verses, rushing the end of each line like a poorly spaced Christmas card message; the chorus haplessly grasps for euphoria but achieves nothing sentimental or joyous or even merely festive. And made all the more horrid by featuring prominently on every single ‘alternative’ Christmas playlist or radio station.

Poor old Justin’s not doing very well on this list – though that’s mainly because his second album Under the Mistletoe’ is jam-packed with awful Christmas songs. ‘Drummer Boy’ features JB singing parts of the traditional hymn over a banging bassline, before rapping: ‘I'm surprised you didn't hear this in the Bible.’ It also features Busta Rhymes spitting the line ‘eggnog with a little sprinkle of vanilla’ like he’s at the till in Starbucks. We can forgive Justin (he was just 17 at the time). Busta should really know better.

Some Christmas songs tug at your heartstrings. This swelling country-tinged ballad from Christian band New Song rolls in with a bazooka full of sap, sugar, and angel’s tears… then completely misses a point-blank shot. It starts with New Song Guy buying last-minute Christmas presents, only to observe a filth-covered boy trying to buy a pair of shoes for his mom. It’s revealed she’s probably going to die, and the kid wants her to look nice when she meets Jesus. He doesn’t have enough money, so the New Song Guy buys them for him, clearly proud of an act of Christian love that begins and ends at a cash register and not, you know, with the guy making sure the kid’s safe and the mom gets help? The lord works in mysterious, very overwrought ways. 

It’s unlikely NSYNC would have existed to ruin Christmas were it not for NKOTB, whose own contribution to the holiday rubbish bin is perhaps the whitest rap song ever written. Ever. This makes The Waitresses sound like NWA. And that’s before the New Kids start rapping in fake English accents. 

Look, anybody who says Coldplay have no good tunes is divorced from reality. But this plodding acoustic number is no ‘Speed of Sound’ or ‘Viva la Vide’, and moreover the lyrics are absolutely horrible: ‘Christmas night, another fight’ sighs Chris Martin at the commencement of a truly excruciating sub-Richard Curtis sketch of somebody who has a fight with his partner, storms off to look at the tatty Chrismas lights on London’s grueling shopping thoroughfare Oxford Street, and somehow feels better about everything. 

Between 1996 and 1998, the Spice Girls released three consecutive Christmas number ones: ‘2 Become 1’, ‘Too Much’ and ‘Goodbye’. So you’d think their B-side cover of The Waitresses’s ‘Christmas Wrapping’ would be a banger. Nope. We’re pretty sure they all just sat around Mel C’s keyboard and recorded it over the top of the ‘Disco II’ automated backing track.

The only person who ever thought the holiday season needed more conga is that guy in your office who always demands to hear ‘Agadoo’ by Black Lace at Christmas parties. And even he isn’t convinced by the lyric ‘Bonga, bonga, bonga/Do the Christmas conga.’