Ten Performances That Make The Case for the Eradication of the Live Holiday Performance
Because nothing about the most festive season in the calendar year should make us suffer this much.
I’ll say it: I think it’s time that we as a society come together to get rid of the winter holiday performance industrial complex. Let’s be honest, what do winter holiday performances get any of us, ever? Holiday music is simply not that great live, but it’s especially terrible when singers get up on a New York City stage in the middle of December when it’s freezing outside in a mini-dress to sing a terrible rendition of some song we didn’t care about anyways. And every year, without fail, somebody ends up showing their ass on national television, forcing their stans to go to bat for their fave’s vocal ability on Twitter. I’d even go so far as to say that the holiday performance season is even more potent than American National Anthem performance circuits when it comes to tanking the public opinion of our favorite musicians. From our favorite artists to the ones we try to ignore out of existence, almost every celebrity has a holiday performance horror story. It’s the nature of the genre! Because holiday music is built for the studio, not for the stage. Here are ten performances that prove my point.
10) Selena Gomez, “Winter Wonderland” Cover for Disney Parks Parade, 2010
This performance really isn’t all that bad on its face, but it’s also very obvious that this is a pre-recorded audio track in action. Miss Gomez, I simply want to know: why is it that on your pre-recorded performance, we can hear your fans screaming louder than we can hear your audio?? Also, the little “dreeeYEEEeeeam by the fiiiiyaah” yodeling moment at 1:42 was extremely funny to me. Definitely not that bad for Selena “the reigning queen of lacking breath support” Gomez, but definitely not good by any measure.
9) Vanessa Hudgens, “The Christmas Song” Cover for Christmas in Washington, 2007
Some may say that this performance is not bad. Some could even say that this performance is good. But just like Selena Gomez’s performance, it is very obvious that Vanessa Hudgens is using an extraordinary amount of pitch correction throughout this performance, and yet it still sounds weird as hell. Hudgens’ attempt to put a jazzy spin on the Christmas classic is irritating at best, and physically painful at its worst. This sounds like what I imagine Fergie to sound like if she were to sing this song, and I mean that as an insult. Also, the cuts to the very uncomfortable children in the audience make it very clear that this performance sucked. Vanessa, please just stick to acting, because I really liked Spring Breakers, and I really did not like this.
8) Ashlee and Jessica Simpson, “Little Drummer Boy” Cover for ABC’s Nick and Jessica’s Family Christmas Special, 2004
I’ll be honest, this performance really isn’t THAT bad to me… until we get to the last minute of the song, where the sisterly pair break out into what I assume is supposed to be a harmony. Jessica, you really didn’t have to sing all that passionately while your sister is struggling to hear herself. Poor Ashlee, she’s truly mumbling through the end. This is very painful to watch. Sorry to all the folks with an overachieving sibling, this is probably triggering to you all. This performance emits the same energy as Sharpay and Ryan from High School Musical if Ryan was literally untalented and Sharpay stayed the same. This feels like something the pair did when they were little and then somebody said it would be cute to do again as adults. It wasn’t. Especially not on TV.
7) Patti LaBelle, “This Christmas” Cover, The National Tree Lighting Ceremony, 1996
This is a classic example of how treacherous these Christmas performances can be even for the absolute best vocalists we have. Even though Miss Patti LaBelle is delivering an excellent vocal performance here, the holiday spirit found a way to ruin the moment. This is why I argue that it’s not always the performers but the songs themselves that are the problem. Who has the time to memorize the lyrics to “This Christmas” when you have an entire catalogue of impeccable song lyrics stored in your brain anyways??? Unfortunately, the cue-card holder managed to derail the entire performance. Also, let’s be real: this performance gives us another reason why these televised holiday performances suck so bad: they’re all clearly slapped together at the last minute and very unorganized. I mean, truly, WHERE WERE MISS LABELLE’S BACKGROUND SINGERS??? WHERE WERE THE ORGANIZERS OF THE EVENT??? HOW COULD THEY LET THIS HAPPEN? Screw televised holiday concerts for embarrassing Patti LaBelle like this. She didn’t deserve it.
6) Fifth Harmony, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” Cover for the X-Factor USA, 2012
Okay, I know that these girls were trying their best when this little performance came out and they weren’t that experienced. But this performance was so terrible that I had to include it. First of all, these Candy Land-esque outfits were setting these poor girls up for failure. Every moment of this track is patchy at best in terms of vocals (except for Normani and Ally’s solo verses, which caught me by surprise). Lauren’s verse is shaky while Camila’s is down-right annoying. Dinah Jane’s solo is good in some parts, but that falsetto is actively comedic. And then, to top it off, we have Camila’s overly confident and extremely sharp vocals burning my ears on that “Please please please” line. They were doing absolutely too much during this performance for almost zero payoff. In my view, this performance marked the beginning of the end for Fifth Harmony, and they hadn’t even left the X-Factor yet. Next time girls, just stick to what you know. Just sit down on some stools and sing a polite rendition of “Mary Did You Know.” Please. For all of our sakes.
5) Jacquees, “This Christmas” Acapella Cover, Mina’s House on Sirius XM Performance, 2018
Jacquees, I know you were put on the spot to do this by Mina SayWhat but oh my god, I would’ve just stayed quiet!!! The lack-luster snaps, the hesitation to sing, the “come on qui” in the background, the reliance on these terrible runs. We really lost with this one. I think the lowest point in this performance is the total miss of the note on “caroling” and then the god-awful attempt to cover that up with a messy ass downward run on “through the night.” And then, he finishes the awful two minute rendition with “I had thought if I mixed up Usher and Chris, I couldn’t remember what it sounded like.” He also had the nerve to blame Mina SayWhat for messing him up on the final notes!! No sir, you just didn’t know that song!! More proof that these songs are written for the studio, because that “Qui-Mix” was downright humiliating. This feels like bullying at this point but I’m really not even trying to be mean. Jacquees needs to tell Mina SayWhat that he’s never coming on her show ever again for embarrassing him like that.
4) Taylor Swift, “Picture to Burn, Love Story, and Change” Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve, 2008
I know this one isn’t a Christmas song per-se. However, I argue that this performance proves how shitty it is to sing live in the frigid cold of a New York City winter, and that’s reason enough for everyone to cancel all outdoor holiday performances moving forward. Jesus Christ, this performance has got to be some of the worst I’ve ever heard in my entire life. We knew Taylor Swift was a mediocre performer at best, but this performance made her usually tolerable bleating sound like nails on a chalkboard. Everything about this performance was chaotic, but the horrible rendition of “Change” takes the cake. Swift singing about the revolution while sounding like her organs are shutting down from the cold is both fitting for the occasion and utterly disturbing to watch. After watching this performance, I really have to ask myself, “Was it actually good to be in New York, Taylor? Or were you just jinxing yourself?”
3) Justin Bieber, “Christmas Eve” #PurposeInto Performance, 2015
Now we are getting to the holy-grail of terrible Christmas performances. This performance shows us that not even writing the song yourself can save you from forgetting the words. Bieber can’t even get through the first verse of this song without fumbling the words, aptly shouting, “The f**k are the words, dude? I’ll just go to the second verse,” into the mic for everyone to hear. Christmas songs are simply the worst genre of music to ever exist for performers everywhere, and this performance epitomizes that. I mean, not only does Bieber completely forget the words, but this performance has some of the sloppiest vocal moments of his career! These runs are simply atrocious! And he really sounds like his vocal chords are being held together with Kleenex and paper clips! Where is the breath support here??? This is actively the most annoying Bieber has ever sounded, and I’m going to blame most of that on this terrible song. This song also has some of the dumbest lyrics of any Christmas song I’ve ever heard. What the hell does “when we use our imagination, we can fly to Never-Neverland,” have to do with Christmastime?? I’m truly glad the holidays don’t last long enough for me to care to find out.
2) Mariah Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting, 2014
This is probably the first performance that came to your mind when you read the title of this piece. And that’s because it will go down as one of the worst live performances in recorded history to ever exist. Everything about this performance is so, so goddamn bad. Carey’s vocals are probably the lowest point of the entire performance, with everything that could possibly go wrong vocally here going worse than wrong. Who mixed the audio for this one is my question? Why did we get damn-near perfect access to her mic feed and barely any sound outside of that?? It is so unfortunate because it probably wouldn’t have been that painful if the audio was mixed correctly for TV. This performance ruined Mariah Carey, the literal queen of Christmas!!! If Carey wasn’t spared from the burn of holiday performances, how can we expect anybody else to survive??? Also, what the hell are these little kids doing dancing around her in all-white??? This performance is comedic in its absurdity, but also terribly tragic when you think about the implications this moment had for Carey’s career. If this moment can’t get you to say screw all holiday performances, honestly nothing else will.
1) Idina Menzel, “Let it Go” Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, 2015
Not Idina Menzel!!! Tragically, our patron saint of the mezzo soprano fell prey to the perils of the holiday performance. This rendition of “Let it Go” was one of the worst things I have ever seen in my whole life and I wish I was joking. Menzel starts off sharp as hell with some very weird affect that kinda sounds like Celine Dion and Dolly Parton had a baby, and that only exacerbates the sharpness. Also, I’m 98% sure that something was wrong with Menzel’s in-ear piece because of the way she is flying through this song and the instrumental is simply not able to keep up with her. The tempo is kicking her ass and it’s so embarrassing to watch. The performance almost isn’t that bad, until we get to about 2:17… That’s where this performance goes from bad to a big dumpster fire. Here, Menzel starts laying it thick as hell on the vibrato to the point where she’s bordering a yodel on her sustained notes. Then, we get to “I’m neva goIN back,” which can only be described as a randomized jumble of notes, and then, we jump straight into a horrific vocal fry on the last let-it-go refrain. We’re almost at the end, and you ask yourself, “how can this get any worse???” And then Menzel belts (guttural screams?) “LET THE STORM RAGE ONNNNN,” like she’s in a 90’s heavy metal band and not the lead of a Disney animated movie. This performance single-handedly took down one of my absolute favorite performers and I will never forgive the holidays for that.
Ultimately, I think we can all agree that Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and all holiday performances alike are the enemies of progress for the vocalist diva community. It’s time that the global stan community put our feet down and say “enough is enough.” Just release the studio versions and play music videos at the big holiday events. Please.