Six years ago, we gleefully presented our readers with Ten Truly Strange Christmas Albums, a list of records which outstripped just about all other holiday platters in terms of weirdness, inappropriateness, and/or sheer awfulness. And now, we’re back with another sackful of eye-popping—and, in some cases, ear-gouging—Yuletide bangers. Santa, we figured, would want it that way.
But while some of the records we’ve listed here are, indeed, truly terrible, others qualify for inclusion simply by virtue of their endearing oddness. Some have been selected for being about the last thing you’d expect from the artists who recorded them; some are here for putting novel spins on Christmas standards we never thought we’d need to hear again; and some have radically rewired our notions of what a “Christmas album” can be.
So if you’re looking to spice up your holiday playlists, aggressively annoy your friends and family, or just banish that Mariah Carey earworm into oblivion, these 10 unforgettable (for better or worse) Christmas albums are gifts that will keep on giving.
10. Ali Lohan, Lohan Holiday (2006)
Ever since 1948, when Columbia Records released Frank Sinatra’s Christmas Songs by Sinatra, Christmas albums have been a consistently surefire way for established stars to earn some extra cash. However, launching a singing career with a Christmas album is a much riskier move. But back in 2006, someone bizarrely thought that this blizzard of Auto-Tuned holiday fluff would be just the thing to catapult Lindsay Lohan’s 12-year-old little sister to fame. Big Sis herself appears on the album’s treacly title track (their mother Dina also shows up to flatly intone Bible verses over a weirdly bouncy “Silent Night”), but neither she nor Amy Grant’s guest vocals on “Santa’s Reindeer Ride” can save Lohan Holiday from being about as appetizing as a stale fruitcake.
9. Thor, Christmas in Valhalla (2018)
Canadian body-building champion and self-styled rock warrior Jon Mikl Thor swings his mighty Viking hammer in the direction of the holiday season on this 2018 outing, resulting in such agreeably boneheaded hard-rock anthems as “Donner & Blitzen,” “Gonna Have a Rockin’ Christmas,” and “Slay Rider”—all of which generate enough power to short out the light displays on your entire block. And just for fearsomely festive measure, Thor caps Christmas in Valhalla with “Cold Saint Nick,” a dramatically intoned rewrite of “The Night Before Christmas” in which Santa becomes a flesh-hungry zombie.
8. The Six Million Dollar Man, Hear 4 Exciting Christmas Adventures (1978)
ABC’s The Six Million Dollar Man—starring Lee Majors as the bionically enhanced government agent Steve Austin—was one of the most popular TV action series of the 1970s, spawning board games, toys, and the spin-off series The Bionic Woman. In 1978, the show also inspired Peter Pan Records (a company specializing in children’s music) to release this album of Christmas-themed Steve Austin adventures delivered in the style of old-fashioned radio dramas. None of the show’s actors actually appear on the record (though whoever’s playing the title character at least does a half-decent Majors imitation), and the total recording budget was probably closer to $600, but more than a few kids were surely thrilled to find Hear 4 Exciting Christmas Adventures under their trees that year.
7. Billy Idol, Happy Holidays (2006)
Back in the mid-’80s, when he was letting loose with a “Rebel Yell” and generally serving as the original MTV era’s poster boy for Dionysian excess, the notion of Billy Idol cutting a straightforward album of Christmas classics seemed about as remote as the idea of him running for Congress. And yet, 2006’s Happy Holidays is a surprisingly convincing Christmas album, thanks in part to Idol putting his Crosby-esque croon to good use on the likes of “Silver Bells,” “Silent Night,” and “White Christmas.” And if it’s impossible to take him seriously when he’s singing about being saved from Satan’s power on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” the lusty cover of Elvis’ “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” is happily right in Idol’s wheelhouse.
6. Barnes & Barnes, Holidaze in Lumania (2019)
Spiritual forefathers of Ween, the duo of Art and Artie Barnes (a.k.a. Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer) are best known for their 1979 Dr. Demento classic “Fish Heads.” But they also made 10 albums of similarly warped home recordings between 1980 and Haimer’s passing in 2023. Holidaze in Lumania, B&B’s lone stab at Yuletide immortality, was released in 2019 but thankfully showed no signs of belated maturity. Song topics here include sex (“Horny at the Holidays,” “I’ve Got Some Presents for Santa”), familial dysfunction (“Down by Candy Cane Lane,” “Why Mommy, Why Do You Cry?”), and holiday bummers (“It’s Christmas Time and I Am Not with You,” “The Angel of Death Is Near”), while “Santa’s Gone on Strike” finds Kris Kringle adopting a gluten-free diet and seriously considering a career change.
5. Douglas Leedy, A Very Merry Electric Christmas To You! (1969)
The massive success of Wendy Carlos’ 1968 Moog synthesizer album Switched-On Bach inspired the release of several Moog-oriented Christmas albums, including the following year’s Christmas Becomes Electric by The Moog Machine and Sy Mann’s Switched on Santa! in 1970. But the most interesting was A Very Merry Electric Christmas to You!, a 1969 recording by UCLA Electronic Music Studio founder Douglas Leedy which employed both Moog and Buchla synthesizers—along with a custom Leedy-designed device called an Ognob Generator—to create otherworldly (and at times profoundly jarring) electronic renditions of holiday favorites.
4. Jacob Miller and Ray I, Natty Christmas (1978)
Santa’s got a brand new bag…of weed! If your idea of the perfect Christmas includes stockings (or at least bowls) stuffed with copious amounts of ganja, you’ll definitely dig this fragrant 1978 outing from Inner Circle vocalist Jacob Miller and Jamaican DJ Ray I, which features reggae rewrites of holiday standards like “Deck the Halls” (“with lots of collie”), “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (“and a dancehall New Year”) and “Silver Bells” (“it’s Christmastime in the ghetto”), along with several equally festive originals. Novelty aspects aside, the music here—which includes contributions from the legendary rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare—is top-notch, and the vibes are decidedly “irie,” making Natty Christmas a cinch to liven up your Yule.
3. Eban Schletter, Eban Schletter’s Cosmic Christmas (2009)
In 2009, film composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Schletter—best known for his musical contributions to SpongeBob Squarepants and Mr. Show—served up a wonderfully weird concept album about a military satellite encountering the energy of the Christmas Spirit somewhere in deep space. Original songs like “What Will Become of Christmas?” (which features vocals by Grant-Lee Phillips) rub space helmets with gorgeous theremin- and Moog-driven exotica reinterpretations of classics like “We Three Kings” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” If they celebrated Christmas in The Twilight Zone, Schletter’s album would be in constant rotation.
2. Tarja, Dark Christmas (2023)
If you like your holiday sounds as moody and glacial as a winter night in Finland, Tarja Turunen’s 2023 entry into the Christmas canon will definitely bring your festivities down to the desired frigid temperatures. But while it’s no real surprise to hear the former Nightwish vocalist putting an icy, operatic spin on the traditional likes of “The First Noel” or “Angels We Have Heard on High,” her darkly dramatic reworkings of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” will have you seriously reconsidering your long-running aversion to these dreaded modern holiday hits.
1. Bootsy Collins, Christmas Is 4 Ever (2006)
A festively funky outing that could’ve just as easily been called Christmas on the One, this 2006 album from Bootsy Collins is filled to the tree-topper with the same thump-tastic bounce and giddy sense of humor that the bass icon brought to his previous work with James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Bootsy’ Rubber Band. Raucous, ridiculous, and packed with funk royalty (including George Clinton, Bobby Byrd, Fred Wesley, Bernie Worrell, Michael Hampton, Gary Shider, and Bootsy’s brother Catfish Collins), Christmas Is 4 Ever also finds Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack, Macy Gray, Buckethead, Bishop Don “Magic” Juan, and even Charlie Daniels showing up to sip the spiked eggnog. The resulting jams will totally blow the roof off the mutha, to say nothing of your office Christmas party.
