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Jesus Christ! We've Only Ranked the 10 Greatest Christmas Songs in Order of Greatness!

Sick of the same old Christmas songs? Here are ten objectively perfect festive bangers, explained by your favourite writers.

Ah, Christmas. As the late Andy Williams once sung, "It's the most wonderful time of the year! Ding dong!" It is a time for celebration, and family, and feeling good about yourself for giving money to charity on one of the 365 days of the year, and pies. And what holds it all together, like eggs in a rich shortcrust pastry? Yes, that's right: music! Christmas is nothing without all those stories of coming home, dashing through the snow, only to catch your mum snogging some guy you don't recognise in your living room. Indeed, a Christmas without music is like John Grimes without Edward Grimes. Don't recognise their names individually? Exactly.

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The thing is, there are so many tired and terrible Christmas tune lists out there. The running order has all but been embedded into our brains. Have you grown weary of watching David Gest on the annual VH1 countdown, shoehorning every personal anecdote he has about Michael Jackson between Chris Rea and The Pretenders? Are you bored of 'here are some genuinely decent Christmas songs actually' content that has been dining off that one time Snoop Doggy Dogg put on a hat and recontextualised Santa as a pimp since 1996? Are you over indie's desperate, unrelenting bid to make Christmas music cool by ranking every unnecessarily long album by She & Him and Sufjan Stevens?

We here at Noisey feel the same way. So, we put together a Proper List, stuffed with compelling essays from some of your favourite writers on why the song they've chosen truly is the greatest Christmas song of all time. Ho ho ho, and a merry christmas to you!

10. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

I know what you're thinking. What!? But listen, there are a few reasons why "Mr. Blobby" by Mr. Blobby is the 10th best Christmas song of all time. After all, it was Christmas #1 in 1993 for three weeks, beating Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" on its path to glory. First, there's its innovative musical structure, which spans genres, time signatures and fundamental levels of sense. More than this, however, it's because at Christmas, Mr. Blobby is us all. Blobby is a classic hedonist: nihilistic, vain, destroying everything in his path and bellowing his own name like the product of a botched attempt to breed DJ Khaled with a Flump. And though most of us keep our decadent sides in check for the rest of the year, "Mr. Blobby" encourages us to live at our most merry Blobbiestness, serving only the pleasures of the body. It's Blobby's world, and on Christmas, we can all live in it. Lauren O'Neill

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9. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

As soon as I was asked to contribute to this feature, I knew exactly what I was going to pick. By their nature, Christmas songs aim to drive those who hear them into a place that exists far away from sanity. For that reason, the best festive anthem of all time is "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby. This defiance of good taste, this hallmark of hot trash, this veritable exorcism of reality. Twenty three years later it is as good as the day it dropped, and therefore as bad as it has ever been. Ultimately, it is proof that no matter how deep we bury them underneath the earth, every decaying piece of detritus and garbage bag will come back to haunt our future. Merry christmas, you fiery pieces of shit! Ryan Bassil

8. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

Riddle me this: What is Mr Blobby? Is he supposed to be an alien? I think that's what the start of the video is trying to say; that Mr Blobby is some kind of pink, perforated alien descended to Earth with the expressed intention of pushing Noel Edmonds onto plates of jelly. Also, why does Mr Blobby's voice sound like that? Why does he sound like 1500 pigs being dragged backwards across a floor of broken glass by their tails? Why does he sound like a baby crying inside a computer? What is the meaning of this song? Like, what do the lyrics, "Blobby, oh Mr Blobby, if humanity's a question of degree / Blobby, Mr Blobby, stay loyal to your Blobby pedigree," actually mean? And what do they have to do with Christmas? What does any of this have to do with Christmas? Honestly, I don't know. All I do know, is that this is the greatest Christmas song ever made, and that makes me proud to be British. Angus Harrison

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7. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

Christmas songs can be categorised thusly, which is often overlooked: Legitimately Good Christmas Songs, i.e. bangers that transcend the season but can only be played throughout it, which is why we hold them dear; and Awful Christmas Songs That Are Also Mad, which are songs that have loads of bell sounds on them and squealing guitar riffs, and are insane. So in the L.G.C.S. corner we have, like, "Last Christmas" by Wham!, because "Last Christmas" by Wham! is an absolute fucking bangarang and it's basically a crime you can't drop it during your DJ set at a wedding in March. And then in the A.C.S.T.A.A.M. corner you have, say, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas" by Wizzard, which also fucking blows all other music away but also necessarily could not exist without the concept of Christmas to pin it to – the jingling, the sing-it-from-a-distance delivery, the repetitiveness: none of it could exist without Christmas. Don't bring East 17 into this because that East 17 one doesn't count.
 
So we know, now, what Christmas songs are: they are good, or they are Christmassy, and we love them like we do a brother, a favoured aunt. You wheel the Christmas songs out every year like tinsel from a loft and coo over them, get drunk to them, howl them while swaying alone in the middle of the dancefloor at the otherwise vibeless office party. You remember them, and that is half of loving them: when you hear a long-forgotten banger it tickles certain synapses in your brain, the synapses that make you hold a single finger in the air and towards the speaker, turn to anyone you're with and go wide-eyed, your hips are already dancing, you're already bopping your head. Transcend that feeling and stretch it out across an entire 30-day period and you have Christmas, and that is part of the nostalgia and warm glowiness that makes the season so nice.
 
And then, in the centre, we have the one song that defies Christmas categorisation, one large pink leg sat astride L.G.C.S., another blancmange-coloured foot planted firmly in A.C.S.T.A.A.M. That song is "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby. You think it's not a Christmas song, but you're wrong, because it's threaded through with the most Christmas song trope on this earth (children's choir singing a high-pitched, repetitive refrain), and also it was Christmas number one. And then it's also mad because it's got Yung Clarkson in the video, it is a gigantic pink monster whose very existence makes me almost sick – the way he doesn't truly talk, the way he just collapses everywhere instead of walking, my visceral reaction to Blobby is similar to emerging, sweating and frantic and aching, from a three-day fever dream – and who was invented by Noel Edmonds. "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby is the greatest Christmas song because it's barely a song, just a squawk of noise and panic, and in many ways captures the feeling of Christmas more than anything else. Cancel Slade, cancel Shakin' Stevens. Mr Blobby is the King of Christmas. Joel Golby

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6. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

Absolute blobby-licious blobby banger imo !!! Joe Zadeh

5. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

Sometimes, a Christmas song comes along that speaks to our collective psyche; that embodies the human spirit; that gets to the very heart of existence, of why we're here, of what we're doing, of what it means to live. "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby, from his 4-track EP Mr Blobby, is one such Christmas song, and it means so much more than basic festive cheer. So stick it on, listen properly to the lyrics, and use your bloody head for once! Daisy Jones

4. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

We've got a family tradition in my house. Every year, without fail, after the turkey's done and the dishwasher's been loaded and grandad's started sucking the rum out of chocolate liqueurs, we all sit down together and talk about Noel Edmonds. We sit there, in a circle, knees-crossed, eyes shut, quietly chanting his name over and over, gradually getting louder and louder until the room feels like it's shaking, like it's about to levitate, like we're all about to find ourselves up there in heaven, knees-crossed, eyes shut. This continues for around ten minutes or so. Then there's silence… Then there's "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby. We sing "Mr Blobby" by Mr Blobby till our voices are hoarse and the blood drips down our chins. We sing until our voices, in unison, break and crack and stop.

I do not know why this chain of events unfurls as it does, as it always will. I am no closer to understanding the rhyme or reason of the ritual. My father, and it is always my father, spells the end of the ceremony by lighting the wick of a lifesize Noel Edmonds candle. We sit in awed silence, watching him burn. We watch him melt back into nothingness. We count our blessings. Another day, here on earth. Josh Baines

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3. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

Am I meant to find this funny? Why am I being asked to write 100-150 words about Mr Blobby for a Christmas piece? I know I'm meant to write something good here, honest, I get it – be creative and stuff – but I'm really not into this and I don't know why I was asked to take part. If I could choose any Christmas song it would have been "2 Become 1" by the Spice Girls, but you've already said it has to be Blobby which just seems bizarre. Sirin Kale

2. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

It took a lot for my editor to get me to write this. But I knew that if I didn't take this opportunity to open up, I would regret it. Dad was… Well, he was the warden of our family, and music was his medicine. It was the first language I learned, and I've persevered with it since, through the good times and bad. To think that it all began with one moment, on Christmas Eve, 1993. I remember it so clearly: Dad, sitting me down, slowly unwrapping this fluorescent 7" and explaining to me what it was. But deep down, I already knew: this was my initiation. The thick dust off the turntable was wiped away, that salmon-coloured vinyl started rotating and - shining through the crackles and dust - the music hit me like a bullet train… Blobby. Blobby, Blobby, Blobby. It was a truly magical Christmas moment. Oobah Butler

1. Mr Blobby - "Mr Blobby"

"Mr Blobby's rise to stardom has provoked anguished commentaries about just what he stands for," Pulitzer-prize winning author Elizabeth Kolbert once wrote for The New Yorker. "Some commentators have called him a metaphor for a nation gone soft in the head. Others have seen him as proof of Britain's deep-seated attraction to trash."

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Now that, to me, seems like a lot of agency placed on a child's drawing of a burn victim whose only personality traits are saying his own name a lot and falling over on purpose. The 1993 Christmas single "Mr Blobby" is a classic example of how Blobby just showed up and kicked a bunch of people in the shins while taking credit for the work of everyone around him. What does he actually do on this song? Fuck all, is the answer. Absolutely fucking nothing other than the aforementioned plus inappropriately touching Siobhan Fahey. But it's still one of the greatest Christmas singles – nay, songs – I have ever heard in my life.

One key problem almost any Christmas single suffers from is repetition. The bass line on Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" sounds like a sample from one of those keyboards school kids only use to press the "DJ!" and "dictionary!" buttons looped to the brink of insanity, Slade sing the chorus for "Merry Xmas Everybody" six (SIX!!!) times, and last minute and a half of "Last Christmas" is just George Michael wailing "YOU GAVE IT AWAY" with varying degrees of emotion. "Mr Blobby", however, sounds like seven different songs at once. It is all the rejected themes for every TV show ever made, sewn together like a quilt of nightmares. I have listened to "Mr Blobby" fifteen times today and I still couldn't tell you how it goes. That's some true goddamn staying power right there.

Another issue is lyrics. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has aged worse than actual Bob Geldof and the words "mistletoe" and "wine" make me want to rip into Cliff Richard's face like a present. "Mr Blobby" manages to avoid the cliche and the #problematic entirely by packing the verses with impossible-to-remember nonsense like "No bridge too far! He has a car!" and hoping you don't notice the chorus. The chorus which, by the way, is "Oh Mr Blobby, your influence will spread throughout the land" – a weirdly Maoist take on the bit in the Christmas single traditionally reserved for espousing joy or generosity or something stressful like that.

Also, it's bookended by farts.

At the end of the day, is "Mr Blobby" original? Yes. Does it get old? Yes, but in the same way going through a carnival funhouse gets old – a way that drives you entirely fucking mad and alters the way you interact with your own senses. Not in a dull way, like eating sprouts on the same day every year until you die. Is it the best Christmas single of all time? I sure think so. And if that confirms Britain's deep-seated attraction to trash, then put me in the bin. Emma Garland

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