You just can’t escape it. Pop stations play all those modern wanna-be xmas standards by every artist who wants to cash in like Mariah Carey did. Jazz stations play jazzy versions. Classical play classical versions.
And of course, the stores, the supermarket, the malls. kmn.
Well, you can. Why do you think bears hibernate?
Buy a set of earbuds. Thanks to competition, prices have come down from when they first came out. When you are driving listen to NPR, and as soon as you get out of your car, put in your earbuds and listen to whatever you want. If you don’t want to spend that much money, ear plugs work too. I use mine when I go shooting and it blocks out all the sound.
I am with you 100%. Besides being relentless, most of the music is vomitously awful.
I find that it helps that I don’t participate in “the season” at all – therefore I don’t have to go to stores except the grocery (bad enough). That also limits my contact with people who insist on requiring that my “holidays” be “happy.”
p.s. sometimes rants are just rants, and they aren’t looking for solutions.
Count me in.
The worst part of it, IMO, is television commercials with their relentless Christmas carol parodies. It just gets so damn tiresome when my TV set is bleating at me with a group of singers expounding on the wonderfulness of some fucking department store or online vendor to the tune of “The Carol of the Bells” or “The Twelve Days of Christmas” multiple times every ten minutes.
Thank God for Netflix. There’s none of that stuff when I have Ozark or Queen’s Gambit on.
And furthermore: I am getting really tired of my local classical music radio station(s) playing dreary “classicalified” versions of very common Christmas carols several times a day.
Hey folks, this is the only time of the year that you’re at all willing to play interesting Christmas music such as Renaissance Nativity masses or original pieces or rare carol settings by 19th- and 20th-century composers. So how about focusing harder on that stuff, and giving us a rest from “Pops” versions of the same damn overexposed carol melodies like Hark the Herald and Silent Night that we’re hearing all the time everywhere else anyway?
You can play good-quality orchestral/choral versions of the big-name carols on Christmas morning, if you must. But until then, let’s use the holiday season for a wider variety of interesting seasonal music that hasn’t already been done to death, mmkay?
WETA out of Maryland? I really enjoy the station, but their “classical” carols are pablum.
Also, I read the thread title as “… all the elf in time.”
I just returned from a Walgreens, and I feel so sorry for the employees there. That shitty music was loud. I can’t imagine listening to that for 8 hours. Let alone 8 hours every day. Holy shit.
I don’t think I have heard a christmas carol/pop song yet. I suppose I am lucky. I have to go to a supermarket tomorrow so I suppose that will change.
This is, though, the season to mock my mum who is well known for breaking into the descant during carol singing (when I still attended such things) regardless of whether anyone else was also doing so…
Best Christmas of my life was the one I spent in Israel.
My gym not only plays Christmas music over the PA the whole month of December, but they leave it on into January. That’s when I complain to the management.
I actually heard a version of the Wassail song (NOT “Here we come a waffling”, but “Wassail, Wassail, all over the town. Our toast it is white, and our ale it is brown”) When I was in college, we did that as part of a Christmas Madrigal Dinner. Have NEVER heard it outside of that setting before. Just proving that, yes, there are artists performing and stations playing rare carols.
Headphones, bay-bay!
I’ve actually got tight-sealing earbuds AND I wear ear muffs over them… and I cannot hear a thing, except whatever book I’m listening to.
I’m sure I’ve walked right past some guy saying “Can you beLIEVE they’re out of Cap’n Crunch? Hey, bub, I’m talkin’ to YOU, dirtbrain!”
I take one earbud out when I get to the register… but if they’ve got self-serve checkouts, I’m still “reading” my book!
I also make sure to have an emergency supply of music ready for this time of year. I have an mp3 player that I bought about 8 years ago. Unfortunately I fear that it is starting to die. It should get me through the next few days, but I may need a new one before next winter rolls around.
Hey, buy yourself one for Christmas! Most mp3 players (even an old iPod) are cheap.
Or a phone! If you hate smartphones, my old flip phones still play mp3s.
I participate in “The Little Drummer Boy” Challenge every year and got nailed in the kneecaps at Fred Meyer by a shitbird Salvation Army beggar playing “music” instead of clanging those horrible bells. Bastard got me GOOD, and my grandkid was along with me so I couldn’t cheat and pretend I didn’t get felled. Three years running I won that thing then this happens. DAMMIT!
What is The Little Drummer Boy Challenge?
Starts the day after Thanksgiving and goes until midnight of Christmas day–if you hear that song, you lose. That’s it! It’s harder than you might think–the last time I lost I was watching an episode of “Gilmore Girls” in early December and got hit with it.
Huh. I don’t mind hearing the Carol of the Drum, myself. ‘Course, I always sing the last verse with my own lyrics, so at least it’s a little fun.
It’s so lugubriously, monotonously awful it makes me want to chew a hole through every vein in my wrists. Do Not Want!