Weird Al’s Banned Nuclear Carols

In 1986, after his record label pushed him to record Christmas music, "Weird Al" Yankovic wrote and recorded "Christmas at Ground Zero," a darkly comic song about nuclear annihilation during the holidays, for his album Polka Party!. The same label that had demanded a Christmas track then refused to release it as a single, worried that its Cold War imagery and apocalyptic jokes were too much. Some radio stations went further and banned the song outright. Yankovic kept performing it live for a time, but the track remained one of his most controversial holiday offerings.

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