0988: "Tradition"

[Nergye]

Noone even mentioned "Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)" by The Darkness. Granted, this is likely to be largely confined to the UK, since that's where they're from, and I wouldn't for a moment expect to see it represented on anything like this. But it's by far the most listenable Christmas song I know, to someone who is predominantly into rock music, and the only one I have actively acquired for my music collection.

Then again, 'easy listening' music (Worst. Misnomer. Ever.), including swing and big band styles, is the only type of music in which there are no songs that I can listen to and enjoy, or even listen to without getting angry (I'm prepared to listen to classical, punk, rap, metal, dance, and many things in between, as background to attempt to appear open-minded and/or tolerant), and sadly much of the Christmas song scene involves this aggravating genre. But just occasionally, I hear a Christmas-themed song that is original in some way, and it restores my hope that there are still talented people writing music, and that one day they will cease to be drowned out by the Frank Sinatras, and the Simon Cowells' latest performing pond life.

[Korvis]

As a bona fide Boomer myself, I gotta agree with the earlier comment that this is the drivel that was forced on us as kids. AM radio. Out in the Iowa prairies we had about 4 stations you could get during the day, and two were mostly ag market reports. For our Parents, Christmas tradition was all about "what it was like for us back in the Depression, when we were happy to get a lump of coal in our stockings. It meant you would have heat for a while". I'm just grateful they didn't try too hard to RECREATE those Christmases. Instead they embraced Dean Martin and Perry Como, aluminum trees and battery-operated toys.

[Proginoskes]

Instead they embraced Dean Martin and Perry Como, aluminum trees and battery-operated toys.

You mean his name isn't Perry Coma? Sunofagun ...

(In related wordplay, "narcoleptic" is an anagram of "Eric Clapton".)

[markfiend]

Noone even mentioned "Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)" by The Darkness. Granted, this is likely to be largely confined to the UK, since that's where they're from, and I wouldn't for a moment expect to see it represented on anything like this. But it's by far the most listenable Christmas song I know, to someone who is predominantly into rock music, and the only one I have actively acquired for my music collection.

IMO The Darkness song is a fairly cynical attempt to cash in on the glam-rock success of songs like Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" and Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day".

Having said that, I still like it

[darktalon]

It's interesting how different this looks from the equivalent graph for the UK. I'd never given much thought to the difference between British and American Christmas music, and it was perhaps a bit surprising how much there is. Though all the songs on there are familiar to us, the top ten most played in the UK in 2000-9 (according to the PRS) include four from the '70s, five from the '80s and one from the '90s. I wonder what that says about our attitudes towards Christmas.

[AvatarIII]

It's interesting how different this looks from the equivalent graph for the UK. I'd never given much thought to the difference between British and American Christmas music, and it was perhaps a bit surprising how much there is. Though all the songs on there are familiar to us, the top ten most played in the UK in 2000-9 (according to the PRS) include four from the '70s, five from the '80s and one from the '90s. I wonder what that says about our attitudes towards Christmas.

we're nostalgic, but we're not that nostalgic...

[tankboy]

I'm a Baby Boomer and, sure, we Boomers drive a huge market share, but I wasn't buying records in the fifties, I was a child. The traditional Christmas songs that make visiting a store at this time of year so memorable are my parents choice of music. That generation has passed and yet the music is still here. So I guess we're stuck with Traditional Christmas Music forever!

[markfiend]

Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas is You

That version is a remake; "All I Want For Christmas Is You" was originally done by Vince Vance and the Valiants and was released in 1989 — before Ms. Carey ever began her recording career.

No, they're two different songs with the same name.

[uknowurright9]

How come anyone thinks that we Baby Boomers actually like any of the crap that pop radio bludgeoned us with when payola-ridden AM radio was pretty much all you could listen to? This applies to all the said crap, not just Christmas music -- but the day after Thanksgiving, every store I enter bludgeons us with the Christmas-season crap all over again.

Ah, now we have hit the nail on the head here. Payola = source of all evil.

Okay, I admit that's a little extreme but you get my point.

[Floorman56]

Please ... Most of those songs are from Generation Jones not baby boomers 1954 to 1965, Yea I know you guys love to lump us in with the boomers.

[gmalivuk]

Who's "you guys"? The spike in birth rates known as The Baby Boom extends from the end of WWII until the mid-1960s.

[Kaiman]

I wonder what impact the war had on the need to celebrate family and religion.

Apparently none, since only 1 of those 20 songs has anything to do with religion or the Biblical Christmas story or any similar theme (and even then, it's just a made-up tale that happens to involve baby Jesus in it).

Also note that 4 of the songs aren't actually Christmas songs at all, either in the religious or secular sense. They are songs about winter or snow that are not even remotely Christmas-specific except for the times that the radio stations choose to play them.

[Jaedreth]

1940's: Baby, It's Cold Outside
2012: Baby, It's Space Outside: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR5sWq6ONws&feature=related