It’s official: Christmas carols make me homicidal.
Now, I don’t have anything against carols per se, I’ve always liked them. Even though I may be agnostic, even the religious ones were pretty. While I don’t particularly celebrate the wee Baby Jeebus’s birthday, I respect and enjoy the concept that people sing pretty songs together to celebrate the birth of someone who will sacrifice all to save them. It’s a beautiful idea and the songs are mostly really nice or fun.
But fuck me! Now I hate them. HATE THEM! :mad: Why? Because they’ve been supercalifragilisticexpialidociously co-opted by every fucking marketing buffoon into consumerist pieces of shit and now serve the function of being endlessly rotating commercials. Especially when they take real carols and stick in their own lyrics about merchandize. Is that supposed to be funny or clever or something?
Eg/ (the the tune of Jingle Bells)
*
Buy this now!
Buy this now!
Don’t wait to deck the halls!
If you don’t buy this NOW
We’ll kick you in the balls!*
I have NO good associations from carols anymore. I first hear them in some stores right after Hallofuckingwe’en and I’ve become so used to hearing them as de facto “seasonal advertisements”, they’ve lost everything that made them special or significant. I’d punch Bing Crosby in the mouth if he was resurrected and stood in front of me and started crooning White Christmas.
This is the best carol I’ve ever seen and I would totally use it to sell my wares if I were in the ware-selling business. Of course, then you’d hit me, so it probably wouldn’t work out as well as I planned.
I have a few CD’s worth of down tempo electronica remixes of Christmas carols (like this one) and those are the only ones I can stand to listen to at all. I personally hate Christmas music, but everyone else I know just lurves it so much that it plays everywhere I go for months.
Damn it, I was hoping this was the thread I wanted to start. Namely: I am not religious. That’s okay. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUST PLAY SILVER BELLS AND LET IT SNOW GODDAMN IT. The options are either classical Christmas (which is fine, but you want more options) or Secular Hits of the Holidays, meaning every goddamned singer for the last 50 years warbling about those fucking chestnuts.
Or the drummer boy. They play one religious Christmas song and it’s the fucking drummer boy. It would fucking kill you to try Joy to the World? God Rest You Merry Gentlemen?
This is my complaint, as well. I am already 100% finished with Feliz Navidad and that awful awful awful “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” WHY are they in the heaviest rotation on the all-Christmas radio station? They are bad. If they weren’t Christmas songs, no one would ever play them, ever.
I basically categorize Christmas music into three buckets:
Religious (most of the best ones, musically speaking, fall into this category)
Cheesy secular (the above-mentioned songs and many other horrible, horrible examples)
Child-oriented (Rudolf, Frosty, and the like)
NO ONE wants to hear non-stop category 2 & 3 without a category 1 every once in a while…even if you aren’t religious. I think most people would rather hear a GOOD song with a religious theme than an annoying, lame one with a secular theme. I know I would, and I wouldn’t care what religion it was celebrating.
Actually, I liked the commercial Staples had a couple of years ago featuring “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”. It showed a guy dancing while pushing a cart, with two morose children shuffling along behind him.
Exactly, Sarahfeena. Although luckily I have not yet heard “Feliz Navidad”. I honestly don’t mind that one so much because it’s just so over the top annoying that I find it kind of endearing, sort of like the succession of World’s Ugliest Dogs.
I reserve my true ire for when we’re SIMply HAVing a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME.
Seriously, I love Paul McCartney. But that song must. die. And John Lennon’s sucks, too. Although his might be barely tolerable if you couldn’t hear ol’Yoko warbling away on that “war is over” chorus.
This is the same basic rant I wanted to post. What’s worse is that every store feels like they have to play this crap, simply because everyone else does.
I would gladly give ALL my holiday shopping business to any store that had the balls to declare their shop a “Christmas Carol-free zone”. But then the “War on Christmas” assholes would boycott them.
I mistook the title as well – I thought it was going to be about Christmas carol parodies.
Note to anyone in charge of publicaly playing Christmas music: Parody songs can be funny. Take special note – “can be”. When someone releases a parody song at Christmas, you may play it for that Christmas season, and that Christmas season only, understood?
The Twelve Pains Of Christmas was mildly amusing for exactly one listen. Now, years later, there is no quicker way to get me to change the station/leave the store than to play that fucking song yet again. It was a joke! I already heard it! Not funny anymore! Fucking annoying! Argh!
Lully, thou tiny little child,
Come to our store this day.
Our cribs and furniture you’ll keep,
Interest-free 'til May.
Mama and Papa, don’t be slow.
Only through Saturday
A miracle from ages past -
Prices you’ll gladly pay.
My current Christmas song unfavorite: “Is That You, Santa Claus?”
At least the rest of the musical slurry is actually sung. Whoever perpetrated this turd simply can’t be bothered, so he basically speaks the lyrics in an overemoting manner. At least try to pretend your so-called artistry has some feeble connection with music, FFS!
Totally agree on the religious songs being better. They were written back when people still remembered how to write good music. But do Macy’s or Barnes & Noble have the balls to play “Shepherds Watched their Flocks By Night” or “O Holy Night” or even “O Tannenbaum”? No, they’d rather assault our ears with overamplified modern dreck.
