After the Halloween festivities are over, at the turn of each November, we expect to see the same classic Christmas hits climb up the charts. Christmas is not the same without Wham! and Mariah Carey playing on repeat in shopping centres, restaurants, bars and supermarkets. Like clockwork, the festive season is celebrated every year with the same reliable songs such as: Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and Kirsty MacColl’s ‘Fairytale of New York’. They capture the essence of the time period so well that we never fail to eagerly await their presence in the backgrounds of our lives every winter. Some of the most popular tunes date back to the 1960s such as ‘Little Saint Nick’ sung by The Beach Boys — but aside from the entirety of Michael Bublé’s 2011 ‘Simply Christmas’ album (in which most of the tracks are covers), it seems difficult to remember the last time anybody came up with something new.
There is no denying that many of the Christmas songs (drummed into our ears) every winter are catchy. While they may be repetitive and we have long since learned the lyrics to them all, we sing along to them throughout every December; the tracks are old but they never age. It is possible to attribute this to a generational effect: these are the tunes our parents listened to and passed down to younger generations through records, CDs or shared playlists on Spotify. Christmas is typically a time for family and friends to come together, to exchange gifts, food, decorations and festive spirit through music. When multiple generations of a family sit down to Christmas dinner, it is a default setting to resort back to songs such as ‘White Christmas’, the best-selling track of all time (Lee, 2019), to appease everyone.
Christmas is also a time associated with nostalgia. Traditions bleed into one year after another, from setting up the tree with the same bobbles you collected as a child to digging out the old wrapping paper that’s been used a dozen times before. Even the lyrics in certain Christmas songs are sung with themes of nostalgia. Nostalgia is defined as ‘a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past’ — and the keyword is the past, for events and memories that have already happened. Humans naturally fall into a rhythm that often rejects change and this is reflected in the music we listen to; many Christmas songs share similarities (played in major keys in order to sound happy, particular tempos to stay upbeat, lyrics about love and home and Santa). To stray from these rules that are almost set in stone would be difficult for any musician, and no doubt could be received with uncertainty and distaste from the general public.
The record labels themselves, who release these songs, could also be to blame. Occasionally these companies have been known to simply release the same record each year but with different embellishments: alternative packaging, a remix or a new featured artist. It’s a sneaky, but, admittedly genius way to make money as it is almost a guarantee that no matter what, people will hand over their cash and buy into it. The industry has become accustomed to profiting off of such measures; it has, after all, been drilled into us that Christmas can be continuously a very expensive affair.
However, this is not to say that there will never be any new Christmas hits in the years to come. Music trends are constantly in a state of change, and new artists are emerging and bending the rules of the industry all the time. Additionally, as we grow older and have children and grandchildren of our own to make new memories and traditions with, the knowledge we pass down will be altered, and our tastes will inevitably change as easily as the seasons.
Art by Elena Maglione
Figure 1: Mariah Carey delightedly holding up a Christmas bobble, Stylist.
References
Lee, A. (2019). ‘Science explains why there hasn’t been a hit Christmas song in years’, Wired [online]. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/christmas-music-nostalgia (Accessed 06/12/21).
コメント