We hear these songs in malls, restaurants and our own festive playlists. Here are the Top 10 cheesy Christmas songs for this year.
There are songs that you would playlist only once a year. Because there is cheese, and then there is Christmas cheese.
It’s the tunes that have replaced Boney M’s Drummer Boy in shopping malls, lifts, restaurants and everywhere. It’s the songs that you cannot escape, yet inevitably, at least half of them feature on your own playlist during festive lunches and dinners.
Here’s the Top 10 Hit Parade of holiday cheese that can sometimes be enough to cut shopping expeditions short and make online ordering so much more appealing, because nobody has to listen to how malls and restaurants and entertainment complexes suffocate music.
All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
South Africa became a democracy in 1994, and Christmas became a Carey power ballad-dominated cheese fest in the same year. The track has wedged itself into almost everyone’s festive seasons and, surprisingly, only topped the charts in 2019, twenty-five years after its release.
Last Christmas – Wham!
Wham! gifted the world the happiest breakup song ever written in 1984. It’s eighties nostalgia and played as a festive, happy tune despite its sad content. Yet, wherever you go, the song plays. Every year. Like clockwork.
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee
It’s one of history’s slowest rises to the top. First recorded in 1958, it took almost eighty years to peak at the top of the charts in 2023. Now, it’s everywhere.
White Christmas – Bing Crosby
When you cannot sleep on Christmas Eve, play this song. It’s slow, cute and romantic and has become one of the best-selling singles in modern musical history. We don’t get snow in Mzansi over the festive season, but we dream along with the crooner anyway.
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Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
Reading the title makes the song play in your head. Originally released in 1957 and playlisted over Christmas ever since, nobody seems to get tired of this sticky tune.
Feliz Navidad – José Feliciano
You can’t escape this song. It’s in movies, it’s been covered by several artists, and it’s always playing on someone’s PA system. The song was initially released in 1970 and has been a constant feature on festive track selections.
Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt and later, Madonna
Finally, Eartha Kitt helped the festive season along in 1953 with a flirty and sexy wish list. Madonna remade it for A Very Special Christmas’s charity record in the ’80s. Both versions are playful and camp as anything, but a welcome break from other Christmas cheese.
Little Drummer Boy – Boney M and Bob Seger
Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band did a fantastic cover of the track in his 2011 Ultimate Hits Collection album. Three decades earlier, Boney M released a version of the song on their Christmas album, and for almost 50 years it’s been on mall playlists, relegating a great song to elevator music.
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Chrissy Hynde and The Pretenders
This cover of the Judy Garland and later, Frank Sinatra classic is inevitably the finest with Hynde’s haunting, multi-faceted tone keeping the suspense, pop and soul that the writers originally intended. The Sinatra version is a classic, so too is Judy Garland’s 1944 debut of the track. But Hynde made it her own in the 80s, and that’s the playlist go-to.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Andy Williams
Recorded in 1963, this is a happy, optimistic tune that is inevitably played, rinsed, and repeated every year. Lovely to hear the first time, but by the one hundredth time, it’s enough until next year.
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