The worst song ever

WFMU’s Tom Scharpling has said it’s the live version of “Porcupine Pie” by Neil Diamond. Komar and Melamid did a pseudoscientific survey and produced this song. But while I was shopping in the Salvation Army in Quakertown today, I think I heard something that beats all comers for sheer awfulness. Any Christmas song made after 1970 is bad, and it seems like they start playing them on the radio around Halloween, which is way too soon. I guess to fill the extra airtime now devoted to Christmas music, they have to play such atrocities as “Christmas Shoes” by Alabama. Maybe everyone knows this horror-show song, but once the children’s choir began singing, after the verse about how the little boy at the shoe store said of his apparently dying mother, “And I want her to look beautiful If mama meets Jesus tonight,” we had to flee to keep from vomiting all over the sweater rack. It seems criminal that this manipulative, maudlin record can generate a revenue stream for anybody. And when it is playing in a retail context, it’s beyond unforgivable. And to think we had thought nothing could be worse than “Mary Did You Know” which had been playing on the radio before. I felt ambushed and violated. I wanted to nettipot my ears with rubbing alcohol. My holiday spirit will not soon recover from that one-two punch of failure. Can anyone think of anything worse than these two songs?