The Most Hated Holiday Song in the World

The most hated holiday song in the world is 21 minutes, 59 seconds long. It features the accordion and bagpipe, an operatic soprano rapping and singing atonal music, and the exhortation of a grating children's chorus: "Christmas time! Christmas time! / Jesus, Mary and the manger / Christmas time, family time / Do all your shopping at Wal-Mart!" Its creators calculate that it will be disliked by all but a few hundred of the world's population.

Music this bad doesn't happen by accident. As it turns out, the most hated song in the world is also the most designed song in the world.

The men behind what they call "The Most Unwanted Song," conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, made their reputations with ironic critiques of the state-imposed ideologies of their native Soviet Union...

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Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

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