Every year City Paper celebrates the holidays with its favorite tradition: The Sleigher. The Sleigher is an opportunity for City Paper staffers and contributors to critically examine the year’s new holiday music, providing our readers with salient details about covers of classics and attempts to write the next “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Some efforts pay off and we gain a new holiday standard. Most do not, and we’re obligated to point out where they fall short.

This year, in addition to publishing our reviews online, we discussed some of 2017’s best and worst holiday compositions for our podcast. Listen to City Paper‘s staff consider the merits of Bret Michaels‘ “Jingle Bells,” Lacy J. Dalton‘s “Carl the Christmas Dog,” Josh Groban‘s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” Joe Scarborough‘s “The Drumpf,” Sia‘s “Santa’s Coming For Us,” and The Piano Guys‘ “Ode to Joy to the World.”

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Music for this episode was by Lee Rosevere, used under the Creative Commons license.