Holiday Music: Dreaming of a, Um, Blue Christmas?

Dec. 11, 2007 — -- O holy blight. Even the Grinch would grimace at some of the yuletide tuneage sharing shelf space with 2007's haul of holiday discs. No longer limited to church-friendly hymns and porch-ready carols, sounds of the season also tickle, titillate and tick off listeners.

This year brings a diverse batch, from tots rapping Trick Out the Tree and North Pole Homies on the Yo Yo Yo Kids' Yo, It's Christmas! to the decidedly adult fare of The Moaners' Something Funny in Santa's Lap, a track on Oh Santa! New and Used Holiday Classics.

Faster Pussycat shreds Silent Night on the all-metal Monster Ballads Xmas, while Santa Claws & the Naughty But Nice Orchestra flip the formula, slapping sleigh bells and a jolly beat on For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of 10 instrumentals on … And Christmas for All! The Holiday Tribute to Metallica. Green Day and AC/DC are declawed in similar toasts.

Holiday Hate and Jolly Old Sadist set the tone on The Flesh Eating Rollerskate Holiday Joyride by Psychostick, which caustically notes on Jingle Bell Metal, "The little drummer boy never really had a band."

Whether silly or salacious, Noel novelties seem to offer welcome respite from the annual avalanche of sap.

Singer/songwriter Dan Finnerty crafted The Christmas Flip Flop "because every time I hear The Christmas Shoes, I want to kill myself," he says. "I wanted to write something just as sappy."

The schmaltzy radio hit Shoes is parodied in Flip Flop's tale of a poor boy who arrives on a doorstep with a sob story about his one-legged mom. He offers to trade his Christmas tree for a single flip-flop. The song's cynical send-off: "As he disappeared into the night, I knew an angel had come to call/Cuz I got a free tree on Christmas Eve, and I didn't have to leave the house at all."

The Dan Band's Ho: A Dan Band Christmas also boasts the lustful I Wanna Rock U Hard This Xmas, politically correct Christmakwanzakah and Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday, sung with We Are the World bombast. Did Finnerty fear a backlash to his humbug humor?