Christmas Countdown 7: Cashing in on Christmas

I'm going to take a break from making fun of Christmas songs that I despise and take on a song that I actually enjoy and only recently discovered existed.

Some of you may be familiar with the fake Glam Rock band Bad News. The best way to describe Bad News, for those of you who have never heard of them is that it's Spinal Tap featuring the cast of the Young Ones. Honestly, Spinal Tap is better, but Bad News certainly has their qualities.

Anyway, last night I was cleaning up my hard drive when I found that I had put my copy of the Bad News album on there and that I still hadn't really listened to it. It has some classic songs like "Masturbike" and a hilariously awful cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" but the thing that caught my attention was a song called "Cashing in on Christmas"

It's brilliant and actually describes what I think is so wrong about so many of the new Christmas songs. I'll pull a couple lyrical excerpts for you:

"This is our Christmas single
Please make it number 1
And give us all your money
To make our Christmas fun"

"Please give as generously as you can to Bad News this Christmas, because, remember,
There are people in the world who are much better at spending your money than you are,
And that's us. Ha ha, merry Christmas!"

"Sorry I can't be with you this Christmas
But I'm in the Carribean with all your money
Having a good drink and a laugh
Have a nice one, merry Christmas"

Musically the song is crap, but I think that's part of the idea of Bad News. Spinal Tap was a story of a fake Glam band who was actually pretty good, Bad News is just awful and everyone knows it. Lyrically, this song makes me want to sit down and watch as many episodes of Young Ones, Bottom, Filthy Rich and Catflap and Dangerous Brothers as I can find. (With a smattering of New Statesman for good measure).

Cheers!