10 Christmas Songs You Might Not Know

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.

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).

Comedy Albums

Where did you get your taste in music? From the radio, perhaps, or the internet? Recommendations from your friends?

And what kind of role did your parents play in the formation of your musical preferences? Did they pass their favourite artists on to you? Did they go to great pains to lay the right foundations, or did they leave you to carve out your own path?

My parents never really had that much impact on the music I listened to - the radio, the internet, and my friends were far more useful in that respect - but one thing they did contribute to my musical upbringing was comedy. Some people grew up with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple blaring through the house; I had Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman instead.