Why don’t new Christmas songs become classics?
There are a bunch of things that are unavoidable every time Christmas rolls around, and that cycle of all too familiar hits is one of them.
Depending on where you sit, this is either a good thing or a very, very bad thing. If you’re a self-professed festive nut, chances are you feel your spirits lifted every time you walk into a supermarket to the instantly recognisable sounds of The Pogues or Mariah Carey, letting the beloved melodies add a spring to your step as you peruse the seasonal aisle.
However, if you’re someone who actively despises the whole thing, you probably find yourself wondering how long it will be before you’re subjected to the sounds against your will – and if you’ve made it this far, well, kudos. Christmas songs, as we all know, are the ultimate Marmite, a yearly occurrence that either pulls you in or pushes you away, there for the taking, whether you like it or not.
What’s perhaps the most irritating thing about it all is the repetitiveness of it – there’s literally no escaping the sounds of Wham! or East 17 come December, and every time it comes around, it’s like there’s a period of mental preparation before you’re ready to expose yourself to the same pool of songs once again. Most of them are older tunes, too, which either adds to the enjoyment or removes it entirely; any encounter with anything occurring after 2000 is a completely rare occurrence.
In fact, the most recent one to enter the 20 most-played Christmas tracks is Cliff Richard’s 2000 hit ‘Millennium Prayer’. But why is that the case? A lot of nostalgia plays into Christmas, and music is no different. But even the songs we hear year on year were new once, so why is it so difficult for current Christmas songs to become classics, entering the cycle of yearly radio play? Well, according to several studies, the nostalgia element is key – but it might also go far deeper than that.
For instance, according to Paul Carr, professor at University of South Wales, most of us tend to listen to – or at least enjoy, to some degree – Christmas music from the 1970s because, yes, there’s the nostalgic element, but it also comes from the songs feeling like they’re personal to us. “We pass these records on to our kids, we listen to them, and consequently these records seem to be having this cyclic impact on generations,” he said, per WIRED.
Some researchers have suggested that certain songs become classics because of their themes and melodies, with the more festive-leaning ones ultimately doing better in the long run. However, others, like Darren Sproston from the University of Chester, found that not to be the case at all. In fact, there are many songs, like East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’, that aren’t necessarily as Christmassy as others on a constant loop, and yet people keep coming back to them.
There’s also the usual claim that those older, more beloved tunes are simply better, becoming classics because, well, they’re generally great songs. But while it’s hard to beat a song like ‘Fairytale of New York’, another, perhaps more obvious explanation is that many recent Christmas songs haven’t had the time to become classics yet. And nothing proves this more than when you consider that many of our current festive songs on heavy rotation weren’t immediate hits upon release, but became Christmas classics much later, like Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, as well as Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’, to name a couple.
In the last few years, a number of singers have given a shot at creating a definitive modern Christmas hit, from Ed Sheeran to Ariana Grande. They might appear among the classics in certain spaces, but they’ve yet to reach that coveted golden status in which they’re considered major festive tunes guaranteed to appear every year. Maybe it’s because they’re not nostalgic enough just yet, or maybe it’s that they never will be – with most passed-down songs restricted to those we’ve already claimed as the ultimate timeless hits.
