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Most Annoying Christmas Songs

Complaints from the demo that populates this board aren't going to affect the thinking of anyone programming a commercial radio station, because they know that we don't matter to their November/December advertisers, aren't listening to their female-skewing AC stations in huge numbers anyway, and that the ones who are will be back after the Christmas music ends despite their curmudgeonly threats to find another station. I've just accepted Christmas formats and the music in them as one of life's great unponderables. Maybe we all should.

This is a "fun" thread about annoying Christmas music. Has little to do whether they get aired or whether audiences like them or not. And no, none of us don't have to accept anything radio provides. If we like it, we listen. If we don't, we tune out or simply turn off.

Personally, I have my own playlist of 120 different Christmas songs I play every year, commercial free and void of any annoyances and 100% satisfaction.

If radio dares to play some of those sleepers mentioned above, I won't be listening.

You can accept anything you want, but if you hear something you dislike, I guarantee you'll change stations too. Human nature.
 
How about Do You Hear What I Hear? which is not only annoying and overplayed, but is historically inaccurate (the King said what?!?!? Herod ordered Jesus to be killed).

Since very little, if anything, from 2000 years ago can be proven historically the words to any given religious song are always subject to belief and interpretation. No use getting worked up about it.
 
Since very little, if anything, from 2000 years ago can be proven historically the words to any given religious song are always subject to belief and interpretation. No use getting worked up about it.

Bing's version of "Do Hear What I Hear" is tops!
 
Personally, I have my own playlist of 120 different Christmas songs I play every year, commercial free and void of any annoyances and 100% satisfaction.

That's interesting. Yet when radio stations operate with playlists four times that size, you complain, saying they're too small.
 
That's interesting. Yet when radio stations operate with playlists four times that size, you complain, saying they're too small.

Christmas music vs. 5 decades of charted classic hits, huge difference.

Does any station have a rotational playlist of 480 different Christmas songs? No.
 
Christmas music vs. 5 decades of charted classic hits, huge difference.

Yet the Christmas lists can draw on music as far back as around 1940...80 years.

Like Christmas songs, there are only a small number of songs from the Top 40 charts that have appeal today. Most "hits" of the past are not hits today.
 
Pretty much everything that wasn't recorded before 1960 by someone. And most versions of the good songs when today's artists attempt them. In fact, even versions recorded as far back as the 60s.

I'll single out Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime". And of course Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Sarajevo".

But all that Phil Spector stuff is great! Darlene Love's Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is an all-time great song, not just a great Christmas tune.
 
Who really gives a flying leap? That isn't the subject of this thread. Who cares WHY we dislike certain Christmas songs? We just do. If you want to trot out that "women love it," b.s., then start another thread for that. That isn't the subject matter here. Although I am sure that if you surveyed any individual women privately, apart from any focus group, they, too, would tell you that there are songs that they, too, are sick to death of hearing.

Music is not tested in a focus group, which is a qualitative research product, with verbal group response.

Music is tested individually with no group dynamic; a music test may have multiple simultaneous participants or may be done individually but there is no conversation or two-way dialogue which is at the core of a focus group.
 
Correct, most have dumped the Singing Dogs atrocity entirely. Not KARY Yakima. Last Sunday morning I turned on the radio in my car, and the first song I heard was the start of that song. BARK BARK BARK...BARK BARK BARK...BAR-*OFF*!

I've also mentioned it 453 times but Straight No Chaser has done some awesome stuff. Their 12 Days is funny. Their new song 'That's Why We Celebrate' represents the holiday very well. But 'Text Me Merry Christmas'...what in god-awful sake's is that?! With Kristen Bell of Frozen? I turn off the radio every time. It's their dumbest song ever.

I also shut off Christmas Shoes every time. Depressing song.

All I Want for Xmas is My 2 Front Teeth by Spike Jones - I'd rather stab my eyes out. Nat King Cole's is listenable. Because it's Nat King Cole. He makes any song better, even that novelty one.

And the worst version of 12 Days? The outright WORST version? SCTV Bob & Doug McKenzie. Don't bother listening to it, it's awful.

'Candy Cane Lane' Sia. Will never be a classic.

That's just a small number of songs I outright don't like, but I love 95% of the holiday music out there. Including songs that rarely or never get heard on mid/large-market radio, like the R&B holiday songs from Luther Vandross, Babyface, The Temptations (their Silent Night SHOULD be on every holiday station...amazing!), Four Tops...
"Text Me Merry Christmas" is currently getting some airplay on Love 105. I haven't heard "Candy Cane Lane" on either KQQL or Love 105 yet this holiday season, but I think it got some airplay on both stations last year.
 
Has anyone heard the new Matt Nathanson cover of Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"? Love 105 has been giving this song a lot of airplay. This song to me is very depressing and annoying. Is it just Love 105, or are all stations playing it?
 
How about Do You Hear What I Hear? which is not only annoying and overplayed, but is historically inaccurate (the King said what?!?!? Herod ordered Jesus to be killed).

In the first verse, the wind speaks to a lamb. In the second verse, a lamb speaks to a boy. The whole thing is ridiculous long before you get to the king. Actually, that's a song I like; the melody makes up for the silly words and the best versions build and build as they go along -- kind of like the last verse and refrain of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" -- which I've always liked in a song.
 
Music is not tested in a focus group, which is a qualitative research product, with verbal group response.
Music is tested individually with no group dynamic; a music test may have multiple simultaneous participants or may be done individually but there is no conversation or two-way dialogue which is at the core of a focus group.
Miss the point much?

This is more about the fact that women's tastes in music are not nearly as monolithic as some would have us to believe.

This is not so much about HOW music is tested.
 


Yet the Christmas lists can draw on music as far back as around 1940...80 years.

Like Christmas songs, there are only a small number of songs from the Top 40 charts that have appeal today. Most "hits" of the past are not hits today.

I believe there's only ONE Christmas song from the entire 40's decade that gets played regularly today and that's of course, "White Christmas"

My point is (trying to explain to Big A) is that the ratio of classics being played (Christmas classics vs. regular classic hits) is beyond lopsided. You have thousands of potential classic hits / oldies a station can choose and play versus a relatively small handful of Christmas songs from the 50s thru the 80's.

A library can consist of thousands of oldies & classic hits, but only a couple hundred Christmas songs, from which I play only 120. I mean how many versions of "Sleigh Ride" do you really need? I might have six, including the instrumental by LeRoy Anderson. And of course you have the great non-carols, like "Driving Home For Christmas" by Chris Rea.
 
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My point is (trying to explain to Big A) is that the ratio of classics being played (Christmas classics vs. regular classic hits) is beyond lopsided. You have thousands of potential classic hits / oldies a station can choose and play versus a relatively small handful of Christmas songs from the 50s thru the 80's.

Only because you've narrowed the list of Christmas songs down to your basic 125. But if you look at the potential list of Christmas songs available across all genres (which is what stations do for Christmas) the number is very close. For example, a percentage of iHeart Christmas songs are drawn from country artists and some R&B artists, artists who those stations typically wouldn't play. But you wouldn't do that in your personal playlist.
 
This is a "fun" thread about annoying Christmas music. Has little to do whether they get aired or whether audiences like them or not. And no, none of us don't have to accept anything radio provides. If we like it, we listen. If we don't, we tune out or simply turn off.

Of your post this is what I like the best, but even it doesn't have to be Christmas music it can be whether that radio stations have for programs or whatever, you like it listen if you don't turn out off. And yet there are a lot of people that don't seem to get or understand that message. One example that i know of, is WGN Radio in Chicago, more recently they fired the popular mid day hosts of Bill Leff and Wendy Synder, and when media blogger Robert Feder that reports on news in Chicago media, like say if a radio station makes a change to their lineup, he will make a report on it either in a full column or one that he has more then one story in them, that he calls Robservations. But anyways when WGN Radio cut them from their schedule, he posted it at night right when he learned about it, and fans really took to his page complaining about it, and making mentions of other hosts that should have been fired instead. But even still what if there hosts that they claim should have bene fired, did and they listened it to their replacement, and they didn't like that host either then what. How can Robert Feder make WGN Radio change their minds, and keep the team they had fired, he only reports the news that he had learned from WGN Radio's managment. But it seems that people don't have the brains to figure this out.
 
I can't stand i want a hippopatamus for christmas!

I Can't stand "I Want a Hippopatamus for Christmas" by Gina Peevley!
 
How about Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer? Talk about nonsensical songs.

It was unique in its day and has become something of a classic. Even stations that play no other even slightly twisted songs about Christmas play the Elmo & Patsy song. It's no more nonsensical than "Frosty the Snowman"; the difference is in the attitude.
 
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