Are we stuck with the same Christmas songs for all eternity?

Fruit_is_Blind · 5 months

"(Note that this applies to only the US)"

Believe me, the rest of the world is exactly the same regarding this issue

Louizidunz · 5 months

Caroll of the bells. All day long.

obsessive_cook · 5 months

I keep hoping Sufjan Stevens catches on. Great voice and some of his stuff is really original while still keeping the holiday spirit and way more relatable than other Christmas songs.

skooma714 · 5 months

I don't understand how a culture puts up with listening to the same 20 songs on a loop for 2 months.

taricorp · 5 months

Relevant XKCD. Hoping this changes in the coming decades.

RTPGiants · 5 months

I know this is more 90s than "now", but since that's only 10 years ago you might want to check out Trans-Siberian Orchestra

sdpr · 5 months

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN! SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN! SANTA CLAUS IS COMINNNNNNNNNnnnnnnNNNNNNNnnnnnNNNNN TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo TOWNNNNNNNNNN

Fuck you, Bruce Springsteen

pppoe · 5 months

idk..but michael buble sure makes it a little easier to listen too..and i'm not even a fan of buble....buble.

god this word buble seems weirder as i type it more and more. buble.

Shaysdays · 5 months

I think a lot of times people grow up with these 'retro' songs because they got so huge for the baby boomers and became 'traditional' even though some of them were just advertisements. Then as adults we (the current generation) play them for a new generation, which then becomes their childhood association, and so on.

Same thing with Halloween songs- most of them are from the 50s-60s. Until Thriller and Nightmare Before Christmas came along (and to a lesser extent, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah") there weren't any new Halloween songs (I can think) of for the longest time. The Boomers glutted the market.

Although I have the horrible idea that in the future we will be listening to an 'updated' "Christmas Shoes" on the holophonor.

poneil · 5 months

Muppet Christmas Carol Soundtrack is all the Christmas music I, or anyone else, could ever need.

snoobs89 · 5 months

If i haven't heard Maria Carey's Christmas song it's just not christmas yet.

kowbonez · 5 months

I was thinking about this at work the other day when we had the Charlie Brown Christmas album playing on loop for six hours. Not once did we get sick of it. I guess because we only hear that sort of music for a limited time every year, it's acceptable to play out all of it, even from 50 years ago.

judehaz · 5 months

I hope we are stuck with the same Christmas songs for all eternity. In our constantly changing and increasingly fickle culture, it's nice to have something be the same as it was 20+ years ago when I was a kid waiting for Santa. I hope when I'm 60 I still here "pa rum pum pum..." on whatever constitutes radio in 2043.

sk1234sk · 5 months

Trans-Siberian Orchestra has a pretty good take on the classics, as well as some original stuff.

Milieunairess · 5 months

I think so. I was in H Mart last weekend, and listened to "Rudolph," "The Little Drummer Boy" AND "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa" -- in KOREAN.

Couldn't decide if it was just annoying or kind of mind-fucking.

b56koutu · 5 months

I have to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album all day. It is like a papercut in my eardrum. Who would you even want to make a good Christmas song anyway?

barbsteele · 5 months

Recordings that should be burned: Grandma got run over by a reindeer, all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, I want a hippo for Christmas, Santa Baby, I saw Mommy Kissing Santa, Baby its Cold Outside, any and all chipmunk songs.

curtymcgirty · 5 months

merry muthafuckin christmas-Eazy-E, best christmas song ever best belee dat son

[deleted] · 5 months

What about Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas Is You' That song is 1990s and is played more than any other Christmas song, I feel.

brainstain · 5 months

New album coming out will take Christmas by storm: Old St. Nickelback

JohnnyWasHere · 5 months

Dominick the Donkey all day, every day.

StChas77 · 5 months

Some of them at least will be around for years and years to come, sure.

'Coventry Carol' has been around for half a millennium and doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

WalterFStarbuck · 5 months

I want to know where to find some good Saturnalia songs.

Chastain86 · 5 months

I want to be very clear about this. I spent three years working as an afternoon jock at a radio station that played nothing but Christmas music from Thanksgiving through New Year's. Lots of people say, "Chastain86, you didn't have it any worse than the people that work at Wal*Mart that have to listen to it every day!"

I had it exponentially worse, my friend. Because my job didn't require that I do other things while Christmas music blared in the background. Oh HELL no. My job was to LISTEN to the shit, day in and day out. I couldn't turn it down. I had to listen to it so I knew when to fire the next song off. Did you know that on average it only takes people 6 seconds to change a radio station if they hear silence? Our ratings depended upon me listening to this dreck over and over again and playing the next song, or the next set of commercials, on cue.

Fuck Christmas music. Fuck it right in the Navidad sideways with a jingle bell.

loopy212 · 5 months

Christmas for most people is, in a way, all about the classic songs. It's about tradition and family and friends and remembering your childhood. So those songs will be around as long as we are playing them for kids and those kids grow up and play them for their kids...

That said, there are new songs that enter into the pantheon of Christmas music; they just typically have to be exceptional. Someone already mentioned the Mariah Carey song "All I Want for Christmas is You"?, but there are others such as "Happy Xmas", "Same Auld Lang Syne", and "A Wonderful Christmas Time" that were popular songs about Christmas and have since crossed over to become "standard" Christmas tunes.

legendary_ironwood · 5 months

It seems like it. Hopefully radio will learn to embrace new classics like The Killers - Don't Shoot Me Santa Claus. I think now it's just quite slow to adopt new songs. I long for the day when the Muppets Christmas album is on the radio.

omplatt · 5 months

most of my favorite Christmas songs are from the 19th century but I still appreciate this modern classic

p4nda · 5 months

Save yourself and those around you from aural holiday suck by downloading the Santastic series of badass holiday mashups. I played these at our big office party last night and got mad props.

cyrex · 5 months

Do we sing the same songs they sang 500 years ago? No. So will they be replaced eventually? Yes. Its tough to say when, but eventually, yes.

omnilynx · 5 months

Ha ha, are you kidding? Both of those songs are less than a hundred years old. In two hundred years they'll probably only be known to hipsters and historians.

There are a few old carols. O come, O come, Emmanuel is from medieval times.

HardlyWorkinDBA · 5 months

With new songs like Christmas Shoes I dont't know that that's a bad thing.

rdlizenby · 5 months

"Simply having a wonderful Christmas time..."

Charl3magne · 5 months

Just so long as that new Justin Beiber shit doesn't become a classic...

ajohns95616 · 5 months

Relient K has an album called "Let it Snow Baby...Let it Reindeer". They've got classics as well as a couple originals. If you like their musical style, and can stand the fact that they're known as a Christian band (I don't know how much atheists can't stand the word "God" in music, even Christmas music. And lets face it, Reddit is full of atheists).

EDIT: Seems like I underestimated the number of atheists out there that don't care, since Christmas is more tradition than it is about religion to them. Interesting.

aydiosmio · 5 months

I think about this every year. I'm comforted by The Beach Boys, who made probably the best Christmas album in modern history. "Little Saint Nick" was an original composition by Wilson and Love, along with 4 other tracks on the album. Little Saint Nick on YouTube

Edit: There are also a few quality compositions in the country genre, but they don't get much airplay. I, like OP I'm assuming, am quite tired of traditional holiday songs being rehashed over and over. It's kind of a quandary though, is it holiday music if it's not traditional? It's hard to make an enjoyable, convincing holiday composition without echoing traditional songs.

Jackpot777 · 5 months

If you can get radio stations and stores to play your Christmas song, you're set for the rest of your life (and future generations too).

It may just seem like the premise from About A Boy, but think about it. Radio stations pay royalties for the songs they play. And many radio stations here in the US play nothing but one narrow genre, Christmas songs, for around ten percent of the year. And radio stations are noted for having a small playlist.

So I'm writing a Christmas song called "Every Day Is Christmas With You" (I've mentioned this before online). I will send copies of the song (lyric sheet, CD) to the agencies of the major middle-of-the-road singers that are already signed to an artist rights association (Celine Dion, Michael Bublé, etc.) and if one of them sings it, and radio stations pick it up, I think I'll spend Christmas in a non-English-speaking country every year to escape the dross that's making me a bundle a year.

So if you ever hear a song called Every Day Is Christmas With You for every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it sounds like the most contrived shit you've ever heard, there may be an IAMA / AMA later!

(after searching on Google) - Beth Ditto, you fat cow, you stole my idea!

MostlyHarmless121 · 5 months

Trans-Siberian Orchestra. That is all.

rhubarbs · 5 months

There's always parody.

http://www.cthulhulives.org/solstice/

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login