December is upon us, which means that it's now officially okay to listen to Christmas music. In fact, you're pretty much obliged to listen to Christmas music, so if you're not a big fan of Wizzard and Nat King Cole and Cliff fucking Richard, you may want to find something else with which to occupy your ears this December.
And that's where today's blog comes in. If you're bored of the same old Slade - because, let's face it, all Christmas CDs have basically the same tracklist - here are 10 lesser-known Yuletide classics that you might not have come across before. I've certainly never spotted any of these on a seasonal compilation, anyway.
1. A Christmas Duel - The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
A rollicking and gleefully hateful cheating song - and then some! Frankly, I'm not sure why Cyndi and The Hives haven't worked together since. I'd gladly listen to a whole album of this stuff.
A rollicking and gleefully hateful cheating song - and then some! Frankly, I'm not sure why Cyndi and The Hives haven't worked together since. I'd gladly listen to a whole album of this stuff.
2. A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer ought to be everybody's songwriting hero. This is a characteristically sardonic take on the most wonderful profitable time of the year, recorded in an era when it wasn't yet clichéd to be cynical at Christmas (more on that later).
