Maria Carey is out: Americans reveal their most annoying festive songs

Mariah Carey’s uptempo love song All I Want for Christmas is You has been a staple for disc jockeys every holiday season since it burst onto the music scene in the mid-1990s, but three decades later, its age has faded. It is showing.

Americans now rank it as the most annoying and over-the-top Christmas song of all, says one ipsos survey in which more than 1,000 adults revealed the tracks that annoy them when blaring from mall speakers each December.

The singer and actress has been very fine this season. About 3 per cent of those surveyed said they were simply fed up with ‘every Mariah Carey song’ – that is, the rest of her 1994 studio album Merry Christmas.

Other tracks that fared poorly included Jingle Bells, a Victorian classic performed by many singers over the years, including Frank Sinatra, and Elmo and Patsy’s 1979 novelty holiday hit, Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer.

Fortunately, there are some festive media offerings that Americans never tire of. Macaulay Culkin’s performance as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone is part of Christmas movie tradition.

John Hughes’ 1990 caper ranks as the most-watched Christmas movie of all, according to a separate survey of 2,000 holiday movie fans in Britain, where tastes are often similar to America’s.

Culkin claims another spot on the top ten list with his retaliatory role in its sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Other favorites include Elf, Love Actually and Tim Burton’s animated show The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Bruce Willis also made the top ten for playing John McClane in Die Hard, the 1988 classic about a New York City cop trying to save his estranged wife and others taken hostage by terrorists at a party. Christmas in a Los Angeles skyscraper.

The list will certainly spark more debate about Christmas fireplaces this year, but it doesn’t settle whether Die Hard qualifies as a Christmas movie or just a Christmas-set action movie.

Hopefully a DailyMail.com opinion poll can answer this proven question once and for all.

There was also room for old-time classics like A Christmas Carol, the 1947 comedy-drama Miracle on 34th Street, and It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s 1946 masterpiece.

Fans on average say they have seen their favorite movie eight times. Some start rewatching them in November and say they return to previously seen movies out of nostalgia, tradition, or simply because they enjoy them.

Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (left) and Bruce Willis in Die Hard (right), which many claim is not technically a Christmas movie, but rather an action movie set around Christmas time.

A spokesman for the lottery group behind the poll said “reviewing favorites clearly has become a tradition for many who can quote what comes next” in movies, which help “bring people together” before the December 25th.

The Ipsos poll also found that Americans say the true meaning of Christmas, which according to Christian tradition commemorates the birth of Jesus, was eroding. Three-quarters of those surveyed said that message had been forgotten.

This is felt more by Christians, 84 percent of whom say the meaning of Christmas has been forgotten, compared to 60 percent of non-religious Americans. Republican voters are also more likely to say the message has been lost than Democrats.

Mariah Carey’s uptempo love song All I Want for Christmas is now ranked as the most annoying and over-the-top Christmas song of all.