Having just endured the annual musical ordeal that is Top of the Pops 2, I feel it would be remiss of me to not mention the phenomenon of the Christmas single.
They’re… Well, they’re not very good, really, are they? Even the well known ones. In fact, especially the well known ones.
Or perhaps they aren’t. After all, everybody knows the offerings from Slade, Wizzard, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Pogues and Mariah Carey. The songs are certainly memorable. But does that make them “good”?
I’m not sure it’s possible to really judge any more. Modern TV and radio exposes us to these songs on such a regular basis every year around the holiday period that it’s difficult not to feel jaded by hearing them so often. And it’s not as if they’re the only Christmas songs around, either; in recent years we’ve had a spectacularly depressing offering from Coldplay; a monstrous collaboration between Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber; and an actually quite good (if self-consciously ridiculous) piece by The Darkness. So why don’t we hear these other ones more often?
I’m not sure I have a definitive answer, save for the fact that it’s a vicious cycle. Slade, Wizzard, Lennon, Carey et al are all regarded as the canonical “classic” Christmas songs, so they’re the ones that get trotted out every year. In some cases, of course, these songs have been around for years, so they have something of a head start on more recent offerings.
This means it’s entirely possible that in twenty years’ time we’ll be hearing nothing but Chris Martin’s maudlin caterwauling and Carey and Bieber’s horrifyingly creepy collaboration at work Christmas dos.
That’s a frightening thought. Perhaps the dull droning of Christian hymns and carols isn’t so bad after all.
Merry Christmas everybody. 🙂
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