World’s Worst Songs: “The Christmas Shoes”

"Can I show you something in a black stiletto? They're just what every terminal patient needs." (Getty Images/Christophe Simon/AFP)

In World’s Worst Songs each week, I like to think I approach my subjects with some degree of rationality — that I can justify my opinion that a certain song is awful. I invite your counterarguments, and in fact, I crave them. The purpose of this feature is not merely to make fun of things. At least not until this week.

The first time I heard “The Christmas Shoes” by Newsong, the tale of a poverty-stricken young boy who wants to buy shoes for his dying mother, I listened with an unfolding sense of horror, the way I might react if I were watching a traffic accident happen in slow motion. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more maudlin, they cued a children’s choir to sing the refrain. And at the end, when a single young boy sings ”And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight”, the only thing going through my mind was this: Somebody’s going to meet Jesus tonight if this song doesn’t get off of my radio right now.

Newsong is a Christian rock group, but I can’t cut them any slack for that. I’m with Hank Hill (of the TV series King of the Hill), who once said of Christian rock, “Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity better? You’re just making rock ‘n’ roll worse!”

I won’t say that “The Christmas Shoes” sucks, however — because that would be unfair to everything else that sucks. Here it is, ready or not.

As always, if you believe this record has charms I’ve missed, make your case in the comments. Then listen to and debate more of the World’s Worst Songs.