{"id":10928,"date":"2021-12-16T17:22:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T17:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/?p=10928"},"modified":"2022-09-20T16:04:08","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T15:04:08","slug":"is-christmas-music-as-tired-as-it-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/is-christmas-music-as-tired-as-it-seems\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Christmas Music As Tired As It Seems?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019d have to go back at least a thousand years to chart a complete history of the Christmas song, back when Bible verse-inspired bangers like \u201cO Come, O Come, Emmanuel\u201d would crush with 11th century audiences. Secular songs would come later; \u201cJingle Bells\u201d was written in the 1850s and became the first known recording of a Christmas song when it was committed to Edison cylinder in 1889 (it probably helped establish the use of sleigh bells as percussion that we still hear today, too). But most pop historians would probably agree that the contemporary Christmas hit, as we\u2019d recognise it, started to take shape around the 1930s. Seasonal standards like \u201cWinter Wonderland\u201d and \u201cSanta Claus is Comin\u2019 to Town\u201d, both written in 1934, show just how far back some of these classic tropes go.<\/span><\/p>\n

These songs offered a comforting image of Christmas<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the context of the Great Depression and World War II, these songs offered a comforting image of Christmas: cosy, stable, with a little bit of magic that was missing from the outside world. The cultural backdrop has changed a lot since then but the music has remained just as popular, with each subsequent generation of songwriters hoping to write a song that can capture the public\u2019s imagination. If they\u2019re successful, their work can take on a life of its own, becoming embedded in the fabric of Christmas and living on long after they\u2019ve gone.<\/span><\/p>\n

It can also make them a lot of money. 1934\u2019s \u201cSanta Claus is Comin\u2019 to Town\u201d was an overnight sensation, receiving orders of more than 30,000 records and 100,000 copies of sheet music within 24 hours of its radio debut. Similar figures are borne out in today\u2019s streaming economy. \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d, a song that\u2019s estimated to have <\/span>earned Mariah Carey $60m<\/span><\/a> already, was streamed on Spotify over 17 million streams last Christmas Day alone, and similar numbers can be found for other songs in the weeks leading up to December 25. <\/span><\/p>\n

This speaks to a large part of Christmas music\u2019s likely draw for musicians \u2013 its staying power. Unlike most pop songs, a Christmas hit is almost guaranteed to be played year-on-year, rather than fading into memory as trends change. If you write an original song that turns into a hit, you could see a large and consistent payday. And if you don\u2019t want to chance it on an original song? Well, you could always pull a Michael Bubl\u00e9 and earn some money performing any number of the out-of-copyright Christmas standards out there. It\u2019s not for nothing that Wizzard\u2019s \u201cI Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday\u201d kicks off with the <\/span>ker-ching<\/span><\/i> of a cash till. <\/span><\/p>\n

Frankly, there\u2019s not really any incentive for artists or record labels to reinvent the wheel here. The logic would seem to be \u2018better play it safe and increase your chances of a hit\u2019 \u2013 hence Ed and Elton\u2019s new single. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d is a bad song <\/span>per se<\/span><\/i> (Ed Sheeran and Elton John\u2019s songwriting talents aren\u2019t in question), but it is a very cynical one. Musically, it makes very little gesture towards anything contemporary, sounding like it could have been released at any point over the past 30 years; lyrically, an allusion to <\/span>\u201cpain this year\u201d <\/span><\/i>is vague enough to apply to any non-pandemic time period. Its music video spends most of its running time reminding you of other, better Christmas media: <\/span>Love Actually<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>The Snowman<\/span><\/i>, \u201cStay Another Day\u201d. You could say it\u2019s a postmodern play of random stylistic allusions, a cannibalisation of past images, trapped in a recursive feedback loop, haunted by the ghosts of Christmas songs past\u2026 if you wanted to go that far. More simply, though, we can surely all agree that it\u2019s just not very inventive. It\u2019s a long way from Chris de Burgh\u2019s \u201cA Spaceman Came Travelling\u201d, where surreal sci-fi nativity storytelling and psychedelic synth arpeggios (incidentally, arranged by former Elton John collaborator David Hentschel) never got in the way of it becoming a wintertime staple.<\/span><\/p>\n

There seems to be a belief that Christmas music is timeless<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is something that many newer Christmas songs struggle with. There seems to be a belief that Christmas music is timeless, and shouldn\u2019t be sullied with modern sounds or production techniques. It\u2019s not hard to see how this became the new common sense, given there hasn\u2019t been a new Christmas smash single Mariah way back in 1994 (although songs by the Darkness, Leona Lewis, and Bubl\u00e9 are steadily getting there). But this anti-contemporary bent hasn\u2019t always been the case. Slade and Wizzard embraced their 70s hard rock backgrounds when they wrote their Christmas hits, while Wham!\u2019s \u201cLast Christmas\u201d would be a pretty boring song had synthesisers not become affordable enough to find their way into so many hits of the 80s. Sure, lots of the classic tropes are still there, but not at the expense of other modern flourishes.<\/span><\/p>\n

At some point, though, these attempts at originality stopped paying off. Pop stars like Justin Bieber, Sia, and Ariana Grande have all released original Christmas songs over the years, but you\u2019d hardly know; they\u2019ve not exactly unseated \u201cDriving Home for Christmas\u201d. Nor have snowy songs by Basshunter or Crazy Frog ever been thought of as anything other than a novelty. And despite the Killers having written innumerable charity festive songs over the years, arguably only \u201cDon\u2019t Shoot Me Santa\u201d has ever threatened to outgrow its origins, and even then it\u2019s yet to reach past third tier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Black genres, from jazz to house music to hip-hop, haven\u2019t always been well represented at Christmas either. There\u2019s a long tradition of holiday-themed soul, R&B, gospel, and funk music, but unfortunately (in the UK, at least) these are more likely to be relegated to specialist radio hours while mainstream channels continue to play Shakin\u2019 Stevens. Nobody is expecting to hear Gucci Mane\u2019s <\/span>East Atlanta Santa <\/span><\/i>mixtapes over the speakers at Morrisons, but you\u2019re also unlikely to hear Kurtis Blow\u2019s \u201cChristmas Rappin\u201d, despite it reaching number 30 in the UK charts in 1979 (higher than the Waitresses\u2019 similarly named \u201cChristmas Wrapping\u201d, which did go on to become a Christmas classic after initially only reaching number 45 in 1982). In dance music, the late Paul Johnson\u2019s <\/span>\u201cWhite Winds\u201d and \u201cSanta Claus\u201d remix<\/span><\/a> might conjure snowy images, but a song that\u2019s more likely to go off at a winter rave is a spin on something recognisable, like <\/span>DJ Q\u2019s vocal chopping garage edit of Mariah<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

At some point, attempts at originality stopped paying off<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s a pop world \u2013 all top end and chords, not low end and groove. Anything too funky could be associated with sex, and Christmas music, as a rule, is entirely asexual. If you do have a horny song, there needs to be a bit of plausible deniability when playing it around kids, like the double entendres of<\/span> \u201cI Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus\u201d or \u201cSanta Baby\u201d. It\u2019s perhaps this very formulaic approach to what does or doesn\u2019t constitute a true Christmas song that has led so many to try and rally against the institution entirely, leading to the dreaded \u2018alternative Christmas song\u2019. These tend to come from people in the indie scene sticking two fingers up at your pony traditions, and they\u2019re mostly forgettable. But some decidedly alternative acts have scored legitimate hits: both the Pogues and Jona Lewie were part of the Stiff Records roster at one point.<\/span><\/p>\n

These songs usually deviate from the tried-and-true formula and sometimes only have a tangential relationship to Christmas at all (unlike Paul McCartney\u2019s brilliantly lazy \u201cWonderful Christmastime\u201d, which speaks about Christmas on a practically abstract level). The holiday can be the setting for a different, perhaps darker narrative, but the songs tend to work because as cynical as the tone-of-voice might be, they\u2019re still sentimental at heart. You can buy that Shane McGowan believes in the spirit of Christmas; the same couldn\u2019t necessarily be said for art-punk duo Suicide, whose \u201c<\/span>Hey Lord<\/span><\/a>\u201d appeared on an alternative Christmas compilation by downtown weirdos ZE Records in 1981 (ironically, the same album \u201cChristmas Wrapping\u201d appeared on before it became a hit).<\/span><\/p>\n

Like all art, the best Christmas songs are the ones that reflect the time they were made. If they weren\u2019t immediate hits, they endured because they embraced their idiosyncrasies. They\u2019re good songs first and Christmas songs second \u2013 tellingly, Chris Rea didn\u2019t set out to write a Christmas song in what eventually became \u201cDriving Home for Christmas\u201d, and Jona Lewie saw \u201cStop the Cavalry\u201d as an anti-war song. In 2017, forensic musicologist Joe Bennett analysed the UK Spotify charts for the week of December 25 and broke down its recurring lyrical and musical content \u2013 but when songwriters Steve Anderson and Harriet Green <\/span>used this data<\/span><\/a> to write the \u2018perfect\u2019 holiday song, \u201cLove\u2019s Not Just for Christmas\u201d, it bombed. For all the trite sounds and lyrical clich\u00e9s of Christmas music over the years, it\u2019s at least a little reassuring that listeners still expect a kernel of originality in there \u2013 a dash of, dare we say it, <\/span>Christmas magic<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read More: Creating A Neighbourhood With Radio Alhara<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Selim Bulut delves into the history of Christmas music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":10949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10928"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10953,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions\/10953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}