How did these women ever have a career? In 1993 Brian Wilson's vastly less talented daughters dropped the attractive third of Wilson Phillips to record a truly regrettable Christmas album. Wilson Philips had a few very forgettable hits, but unfortunately this one, sans Chynna, has stuck around somehow. Like the sound of a box of kittens being slowly fed to a wood chipper, the annoying echoing of "Hey Santa!" haunts one's nightmares for weeks. For some unexplainable reason the song begins with a children's chorus opining about how great it would be if every day were Christmas. However, this intro has absolutely no relationship with the rest of the song. In the song itself the girls ask Santa to bring back their baby who, for some reason, hasn't come home for Christmas. Why? I'll give you two guesses.
1. NewSong, "The Christmas Shoes"
Picking a country song to top the list of terrible songs might seem unfair because they're such easy targets. However, this song is so dreadfully awful that it was actually once named the most depressing song ever by an article in the Guardian (apparently they haven't heard "Alone Again" by Gilbert O'Sullivan). This song is so sickeningly saccharine that listening to it makes one's teeth hurt. The sad tale of a little boy who is trying to buy a pair of shoes for his mother so she can look nice when she goes to meet Jesus after she dies "soon" serves no other purpose than to depress people.
The singer's voice drips douche as he rasps through this weepy dirge, until we get to an old, country cornball cliché: the children's chorus. The song was written over four years (FOUR YEARS!) and was based on a made-up, Internet-chain-mail story. The song was so touching, it seems, that it was made into a book, and, soon after, a made-for-tv movie starring Rob Lowe. What the poor little boy in the story doesn't realize is that once Jesus sees his mother in a cheap pair of shoes from Wal-Mart, the greatest symbol of corporate greed, he's going to send mommy straight to hell. Merry Christmas, little guy.
