The EditoriaList: Top 5 Songs From Children's Christmas Specials

posted in: Features

Nothing says Christmas like TV specials. When you’re a kid, they herald the arrival of the season. Each airing is another step closer to the big day. As an adult, they remind us of that excitement as we gain a new appreciation for the quality (or lack thereof), subtle humor, and often awesome music that these shows featured. Here are five of the best original songs featured in these specials.

5. Marley And Marley “ A Muppet Christmas Carol

Casting Statler and Waldorf as the Marley Brothers in The Muppet’s version of A Christmas Carol was a stroke of brilliance. This song is great, darkly comic, with the two deceased misers still trying to overcome their glee at having been such bastards in life. I also appreciate that Michael Cane, as Scrooge, sticks to Dickens’ original dialogue.

4. Soundtrack “ A Charlie Brown Christmas
The classic Christmas special’s Vince Guaraldi-performed soundtrack has a life of its own as the unmistakable sound of the holiday. It would be impossible to pick the best of the songs, but the Christmastime Is Here number perfectly captures the mess of dreamy happiness, innocence, nostalgia, and even melancholy of Christmas.

3. You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch “ How The Grinch Stole Christmas
The lyrics to this song are a barrage of non-stop classic one-liner insults: Your soul is an appalling dump-heap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled-up in tangled-up knots! Wow. Merry Christmas, kids!

2. Riverbottom Nightmare Band “ Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas

Perhaps the only hard rock song to ever appear in a Christmas special (prove me wrong), Riverbottom Nightmare Band is the autobiographical anthem of the infamous Riverbottom Nightmare Band , a glam-metal act so nefarious that the grass does not grow on the places where [they] stop and stand. The most unrepentantly evil of all Muppets (and this, mind you, includes Uncle Deadly, the Phantom of the Muppet Theater), the RNB (also known simply as “The Nightmare”) is beyond redemption. As they sing: We don’t wish to learn, but we hate what we don’t understand. How can you combat such perverse obstinance? It’s unreasonable. And yet, they’re so good, that the staid judges of the Waterville Talent Contest have no option but to award them first place. And when we are done with our song, who will get the biggest hand? Riverbottom Nightmare Band!

1. Heat Miser Song “ The Year Without A Santa Claus
Heat Miser’s song handily triumphs over all others, including his brother’s “Snow Miser Song” for its swinging groove (it’s slower than the Snow Miser Song), hammy delivery, and sheer comedic value (He’s too much! (Thank You)). The contradiction posed by the Heat Miser’s general insecurity ups the enjoyment factor, as well. He’s got a persecution complex.

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