Six of the weirdest Christmas songs of all time, from C-3PO to Colonel Sanders

Feeling festive: Tyson Fury, David Hasselhoff and Chris Kamara have all tried their hand at recording Christmas music
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Jochan Embley4 December 2019

It’s the season of Slade, Mariah and Bublé and unless you intend on spending the festive period locked in a soundproof room, you won’t be able to escape hearing all the old yuletide classics blasting over the airwaves.

But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find something far stranger. For some reason, the allure of releasing a Christmas album has attracted some weird and not necessarily wonderful efforts over the years — maybe it’s all that festive cheer going to people’s heads.

Whatever the case, it's left us with some truly peculiar tracks to enjoy, courtesy of everyone from heavyweight boxers and football pundits to sentient robots and CGI frogs.

Here are six lesser-known, entirely perplexing songs from the Christmas canon.

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Bad Sharon — Robbie Williams feat. Tyson Fury

As if the concept of a 28-track Christmas album from Robbie Williams wasn’t puzzling enough, the release from earlier this year features one of the most befuddling features in recent memory: heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury. The story is a simple one. Williams met Fury, found out he could sing a bit and asked him to be on the album — and the result is actually alright. Bad Sharon is a jaunty, piano-led ode to getting trollied over the festive period. Fury’s voice is decent — dare we say, gravelly — although regrettably some of the lyrics are befitting of a man who gets punched in the head for a living: “So come on, you sad sacks/ You're not gonna win the human race/ Put on your glad rags/ Go get off your face.”

Chris Kamara — Let It Snow!

What do frantic football punditry and Christmas swing have in common? Up until November 14 this year, we didn’t have an answer. Then, the next day, we got one: Chris Kamara released a Christmas album. The ever-loveable Soccer Saturday supremo has a winning set of pipes on him, and puts them to good use on this record. Kammy hasn’t penned any of his own songs — these are all covers, from Santa Baby to Let It Snow! — but it’s certainly good fun to hear these yuletide classics while also feeling somewhat like you’re listening to a description of Barnsley pulling one back away to Blackburn Rovers.

Crazy Frog — Last Christmas

Everyone from Ariana Grande and Cascada to Olly Murs and Good Charlotte has had a go at covering Wham!’s festive smash, Last Christmas. But have you heard the Crazy Frog version? A year after the release of the infernally catchy Axel F remix, the CGI character returned with its own festive cover. Essentially, it’s the same song as the original, just with an added donk, some lacklustre vocals and our little blue amphibian friend going “bring-ring-ring-ding” during the instrumental interludes.

Want more of the same? Be sure to check out the equally maddening Crazy Frog cover of Jingle Bells.

Meco Monardo, R2-D2, C-3PO, Jon Bon Jovi — R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The story of this song starts off weird and just gets weirder. Our tale begins in November 1980 when, a few months after the release of The Empire Strikes Back, a Star Wars-themed Christmas album appeared. Not just any album, either — Christmas in the Stars was a concept album about a toy-making droid factory featuring vocals from R2-D2 and C-3PO (apparently Yoda was meant to be in it too, but dropped out due to a schedule clash). And it gets better: one song on the album actually features Jon Bon Jovi. This wasn’t some great coup, though, as he was still a few years away from forming the famous band. In fact, he was an 18-year-old floor sweeper working at the studio where his older cousin — the pleasingly named Tony Bongiovi — was co-producing the Star Wars album alongside Meco Monardo. After testing out a few vocalists on the track R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Jon was persuaded to give it a go.

The rest is history — for Bon Jovi at least. Sadly, despite being planned as an annual series, they never got around to making another Christmas in the Stars album. Funny, that.

David Hasselhoff — Feliz Navidad

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that The Hoff released a Christmas album, what with his somewhat questionable musical output in the past (we’re looking at you, Pingu Dance). But still, the fact that he did record a festive record and managed to make it quite so bad was pretty unexpected. Any Christmas album that opens with a six-minute spoken word skit deserves to be handled with extreme caution, and there is nothing else here to allay our fears — especially not the auto-tuned vocals on Feliz Navidad.

Christmas with Colonel Sanders

As advertising campaigns for fried chicken go, releasing Christmas albums might seem like a pretty peculiar approach. But at the end of the 60s and into the 70s, releasing a collection of festive music in order to attract potential customers was a tactic employed by a fair few companies over in the States. KFC didn’t want to miss out, and therefore released three Christmas albums featuring popular singers from the day, and fronted by Colonel Sanders. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the albums aren’t available on streaming sites, but some kind soul has uploaded them to YouTube — and while they might not be finger-lickin’ good, they’re not too shabby either.

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