“What Child Is This” by William Chatterton Dix

Like all famous Christmas music, this song has been overexposed to a ridiculous degree, but it’s actually one of the better Christmas hymns, although much of that is due to its obviously borrowed music. True, it co-opts a tune that had been famous for centuries, but it’s actually a significant improvement on any vocal version of “Greensleeves” itself. There’s a reason that tune is usually heard in instrumental versions…as indelible as the melody is, the lyrics have definitely not aged well. Not only are they embarrassingly maudlin and banal by modern standards, but they project a mindset that is rather poorly thought of today…essentially, “I was nice to you, therefore you should be obligated to”…well, the singer uses the words ‘love me’, but I think we all known what he means. Granted, the lyrics to “What Child Is This” are basically pastiches of Bible verse, but they’re a pretty convincing imitation of the style, and it has a very dramatic, almost eerie quality that gives it a refreshing element of darkness for a Christmas song.

Verdict: Good

“Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms vs. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee

In the Fifties, during the heyday of early Rock’N’Roll, there were two disastrous attempts to create new Holiday-themed standards in that newfangled music style all the kids seemed to be listening to. And, to my immense confusion, it actually worked, as both are still staples of bad Christmas-season store Muzak to this day. Both are among the genre’s greatest annoyances, but “Jingle Bell Rock” is actually the more tolerable of the two. The song’s combination of the cliche songwriting model of Fifties Rock with a melody suggestive of sleigh bells is almost kind of clever if you think about it, and it certainly has a better melody than the original “Jingle Bells”, not that that’s saying much. That said, this is some of the softest, wimpiest “Rock” music ever composed, and even I as a respecter of Soft Rock as a genre agree that this song’s invoking of the word “Rock” in the first place is dubious at best. Also, the singer, Bobby Helms, bears an unfortunate vocal resemblance to a later, more notorious holiday novelty performer, Elmo Shropshire (of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” fame).

Still, at least Helms was a one-hit novelty act who’s now basically known solely for this one song; our other attempt at Fifties Christmas Rock was recorded by a genuine living legend of the Country Music genre, Brenda Lee, who had released tons of great music and certainly didn’t need to resort to novelty Christmas tracks (although it did become her biggest hit, depressingly enough). “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is generally classified as Rockabilly, but that term meant several things depending on the music being discussed. Elvis was Rockabilly as it’s understood now…a very early Country-Rock hybrid…but some Rockabilly was just standard-issue Country Music, only trashier. This song came from well before either the polished elegance of the Nashville sound or the gritty honesty of the Outlaw Country movement were thought up, so it has exactly the sound that people who hate Country music used to think all Country Music sounded like. This is the kind of cheap, lazy trash that automatically conjures up images of a seedy, chincy hotel lobby with a tiny, pathetic Christmas tree set out for show, decorated with a little cheap gold tinsel and maybe one cord of electric bulbs, half of which don’t even work properly, with a lopsided plastic star barely managing to stay more or less on top. Say what you will about “Deck the Halls” or “Oh Christmas Tree”, but at least they conjure up reasonably pleasant imagery for the holiday season.

Verdict: Bad and Worse, respectively.

“Jingle Bells” by James Lord Pierpont

I’m mystified by this song’s ridiculous popularity; I’m fairly certain that nobody (or at least nobody past the age of seven) actually likes it, yet it’s become the quintessential Christmas standard, even being routinely recorded by legit musical artists on their Christmas albums. Part of this, I suppose, can be attributed to its simplicity…it’s so easy to pick out on the piano that it makes “Chopsticks” look like Franz Liszt, and almost no-one is so tone-deaf that they can’t sing it more or less correctly. But this is exactly what makes the song so unbearable—this is one of the most banal, simplistic melodies in existence, and that, combined with the gratingly cutesy lyrics, makes it a fairly strong contender for the most annoying song of all time. And given the ridiculous levels of overplay this song receives, even by the standards of overexposed Christmas chestnuts, I secretly suspect we could cut down heavily on the specter of seasonal depression just by banning this one song.

Verdict: This would be one of the worst popular songs of all time on a first listen, so you can imagine how bad it is when you’ve been hearing it 200 times a year since you were an infant.

“Cowboy” by Kid Rock

Well, superannuated former Country-Rock sensation Kid Rock is making a first-class ass of himself in the public eye lately, so I thought I’d do what I always do when a musician is topical for all the wrong reasons…call attention to one of their worst efforts. Now, I actually rather enjoy Kid Rock’s later, more straightforwardly Country material, and I’ve even defended one of his later hits, “All Summer Long”, on this very site. But his early work, the material on which he actually “made his name”, is almost indescribably bad. We may be horrified nowadays by ill-advised Country-Rap hybrids like Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” and bizarre invocations of auto-tune like Tim McGraw’s “Lookin’ for That Girl”. But that’s partly because the general listening public has almost forgotten about this freakish hybrid of Rap-Metal and proto-Bro-Country that sounds like someone put Limp Bizkit and Billy Ray Cyrus in a blender. Going back and listening to it, it sounds even worse than it was acknowledged to be in its day, and completely explains why, despite his reasonably decent work later in his career, Kid Rock still has a reputation as a human punchline that goes beyond his execrable behavior in his public life.

Verdict: What in God’s name did I just listen to?!

“Go the Distance” by Michael Bolton

The original version of this song was one of the better things in the score of Disney’s Hercules, but like everything in that film, it was definitely flawed. This was easily the most narcissistic of the Disney ballads, with an entitled mentality in the lyric that came off as downright unlikable. That said, the melody, while less than top-drawer Alan Menken, was still lovely and stirring, and it certainly came off better than the annoying R&B numbers for the Muses, or the unfunny comic relief numbers for “Phil”, the satyr who trains Hercules in the movie.

For the Pop single version, they enlisted Michael Bolton, and while he doesn’t sing the song nearly as well as Roger Bart did in the film, in many ways the single version is an improvement on the original. The lyrics have been heavily rewritten to reflect a much more humble and introspective point of view (“But to look beyond the glory/is the hardest part/A hero’s strength is measured/by his heart”), thus neatly repairing the song’s primary compositional problem.

And Bolton keeps his trademark vocal histrionics to a pretty manageable level here…indeed, he’s more subdued and dignified on this track than Peabo Bryson generally was on his recordings of Disney themes. As much grief as Bolton generally gets for his artistic choices, I have to admit that this is another of the handful of times he actually got it right.

Verdict: Questionable at best for the film version, but Bolton’s cover is actually pretty decent.

“Like a Rolling Stone” by Michael Bolton

This cover definitely wasn’t a good idea, but it’s not quite as patently ridiculous as it may sound in concept…Bolton’s attempts at interpretational singing are always at their most tolerable when he has a song that sounds right in his perennially out-of-place Hair Metal scream, and the truth is that his voice sounds pretty great here. The problem is that “Like a Rolling Stone” isn’t really supposed to be pleasant to listen to. The entire reason it was such a revelation in its day is because of how angry and jeering and abrasive it was, and Bolton’s pretty singing and the soft Easy Listening arrangement kind of neuter the song’s intended impact and don’t make much sense alongside its malicious taunt of a lyric. A few of Bolton’s attempts at classic standards have worked (most notably his Grammy-winning rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman”), but mostly his attempts at the genre have been something of an unfortunate mistake, and while this wasn’t as bad a choice for Bolton’s style as, say, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”, it still wound up missing the point of the original song.

Verdict: Prettily sung, but definitely underwhelming compared to Dylan’s original.

“When a Man Loves a Woman” by Michael Bolton

Michael Bolton’s bad reputation isn’t exactly undeserved…between his frequently poor material as a Soft Rocker and his often disastrous attempts to reinterpret classic standards, there’s a reason few people take him seriously. But his actual voice is undeniably impressive, even if his decision to perform everything in an overwrought scream often spoils its effect, and he can actually be a wonderful performer when given material that is both, A). good, and B). suitable for his performing style. His early material as a Hair Metal singer is often treated as though it were the only good work he had ever done, but a few of his early Pop singles (“How Can We Be Lovers”, “Love Is a Wonderful Thing”, “Time, Love and Tenderness”) were valid, and this is one of the best of them. This was Bolton’s third hit covering a Classic Soul standard, but while “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” was just an incredibly wrongheaded choice for Bolton’s style and “Georgia On My Mind” was done in by an awful Soft Rock arrangement, this cover actually works because the original song calls for exactly the kind of Soul Scream that Bolton specializes in. He performs it in almost exactly the same way Percy Sledge did on the original, and it proves to be an ideal showcase for all the good things about his voice. It may be a controversial opinion to state that Michael Bolton’s cover of Percy Sledge actually deserved its Grammy win, but I think I can back this one up.

Verdict: I certainly wouldn’t stick up for all of Bolton’s attempts at classic standards, but this is one of the few times it actually worked.

“Can I Touch You…There?” by Michael Bolton

Despite what his detractors say, Michael Bolton’s voice is actually pretty great under the right circumstances, and as I’ve stated before, he did record a few decent songs even in his Soft Rock period, but most of his material is ruined by his tendency to perform every song as though he was in the throes of some kind of hysterical fit. If you study his background, the problem becomes obvious…he got his start fronting a Hair Metal band, and since that’s where he picked up his vocal technique, he still performs every song in a Metal Scream, whether it’s a syrupy Easy Listening ballad or a Classic Soul cover, no matter how inappropriate that is for the material at hand. It also doesn’t help that his Soft Rock material tended, with a few exceptions, to be outstandingly poor; most of his originals came from assembly-line Easy Listening hack Diane Warren, but Bolton apparently wrote this one more or less on his own, which may be the problem. Apart from the music itself, which quite literally sounds like a porn soundtrack, there’s the disgusting title and moronic, sleazy lyrics that aren’t even competent enough to create actual double-entendres. This is pretty much the worst song Bolton ever recorded, and it does a lot to explain how he wound up with his current reputation as a world-class laughingstock.

Verdict: Ewwww.

“Love is a Wonderful Thing” by Michael Bolton

Michael Bolton has a reputation as one of the worst Soft Rock acts out there, but his first few albums in that vein did at least produce a few decent singles. Since Bolton had started out as a fairly legit Hard Rock singer, most of his better songs (like “How Can We Be Lovers” and “Time, Love and Tenderness”) tended to have traces of this sound, while his worst songs tended to be his ill-advised ventures into the world of Soul and R&B, which makes this song something of an anomaly. The big scandal regarding this song is that it might or might not have been plagiarized from an obscure Isley Brothers single, and like anything that could even be mistaken for the Isley Brothers, it’s not really all that bad. The smooth, infectious Soul-influenced music is a far more convincing attempt at the genre that most of what Bolton was releasing at the time, and Bolton keeps his notorious vocal histrionics relatively under control here, resulting in one of the most enjoyable tracks he ever recorded after he switched from Hard Rock to Soft Rock.

Verdict: Good

“We’re an American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad

Grand Funk Railroad are admittedly not as terrible as critics at the time would have you believe—their brand of blistering, bluesy Party-Rock was actually pretty satisfying on the surface. The problem is that they lacked any sort of depth. It’s not just that they couldn’t write decent lyrics to save their lives (though that certainly didn’t help)…it’s the fact that their version of Blues-Rock, while never short on force or heat, lacked the Soul that is supposed to be the very foundation of the Blues.

This song is a perfect illustration of that problem…it’s a blatant rip-off of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Travelin’ Band”, but if you listen to the two side by side, it’s clear that even at twice that song’s length this imitation pales in comparison to the real thing. I think these guys were trying to lay claim to the genre-defying cultural niche that Creedence’s breakup had left open, but it turned out to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band that rocked as hard as Grand Funk but actually had depth and intelligence in their songwriting, that wound up filling that role for most of the Seventies.

As I said, this band isn’t the abomination most Rock critics make them out to be, and they can be a rather fun listen if you’re not looking for anything too meaningful. But with so many other bands from that era that were doing essentially the same thing only vastly better, it’s kind of hard to seriously recommend them.

Verdict: Not awful, but why would you listen to these guys when you could be listening to Creedence or Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers?