Worst Holiday Songs

Let's Be Honest - Lorde's Song Isn't The Only One That Deserves To Be Banned

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Except for that fact that it’s clearly a highly successful publicity stunt, there’s a lot about the San Francisco radio ban of Lorde’s "Royals" that doesn’t quite add up. If you haven’t followed the story, in the wake of the San Francisco Giants being placed on a collision course with the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, KOIT Radio banned the megahit single from their airwaves.

 

Not to be outdone in their local-hardball-team-jingoism, rival Frisco station KFOG did the same.

 

But though Lorde did apparently get the idea for the song from a photograph of a Royals player, the song has nothing to do with baseball. And if it did, the lyrics could hardly be interpreted as an endorsement of the team. Check it out:

“And we'll never be Royals/It don't run in our blood”

But there’s a more serious issue here. Sure, Lorde’s mellow, overly-inflected form of sparse-bassed musical stylings can get irritating after repeated plays, but the hubbub over her ban is keeping us ignorant of a much graver problem. We’re talking, of course, about the impending onslaught of awful Christmas muzak that’s going to be taking over our airwaves.

Beginning as early as mid-November, we’ll be treated to an array of awful songs that have incomprehensibly become classics (“Merry Christmas (War is Over)”), albums and singles hastily pumped out by fading divas because they don’t have to pay royalties on the songs, country-Christian-Christmas-albums — and remakes of all the above. Given the option of listening to some of these for weeks on end, or instead duct taping a set of Sennheisers around our ears and attached to iPod shuffle with a playlist featuring exclusively Royals cranked to full blast, we’d choose the latter.

So if we’re going to get into the business of banning songs from radio, we humbly suggest it to you that we forget all about Lorde for the moment (until she too comes out with the inevitable Xmas album) and strike the following Yuletide crimes from the radio.

10. Paul McCartney, "Wonderful Christmastime"

9. Destiny's Child, "Opera of the Bells"

8. Glee Cast, "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

7. 5oh!, "Home Alone (Christmas dubstep remix)"

6. The Chipmunks, "Sleigh Ride"