Me talking about Christmas music seems to be a periodic thing here on the blog. I think it coincides with solar flares or something. But this year, I'm not complaining! (well, sort of.) It's been noted before that most Christmas songs aren't exactly new. According to xkcd, the 20 most played Christmas songs of all time were all written between 1930 and 1970, with 16 of those being between 1940 and 1959.
I get that major holidays in the US are extremely traditional, and we all want to pretend to be George Bailey for Christmas every year, but why are we stuck on Christmas songs that are, for the most part over 50 years old? We record them over and over again, so we can get more electric guitar and pyrotechnics worked into the same songs, but a punk rock Holly Jolly Christmas is still at its heart, just a Holly Jolly Christmas.
So, I pose a question of what's the best Christmas songs written since I was born? (1982) Heck, we can go further back and take song suggestions since 1970. (Hint: "Feliz Navidad" is not a correct answer. Also, even "Grandma got run over by a reindeer" is 35 years old!) Here is a reasonable list of Christmas songs if you want to look some over to get some creative juices flowing. Surely in the last 40 or so years we have something that can exist on the same plane as "White Christmas" and "Silver Bells". To be clear, I like most of those old traditional songs, and I generally like listening to Bing and friends singing them. But society should be about progression, not sitting on our Blue Christmas laurels!
Of course, I have a few suggestions.
1. "Happy Xmas" (War is Over) by John Lennon (and I suppose also Yoko) is terrific, and was written in 1971. It's perhaps more of a war protest song than a Christmas song, but since it's right there in the title (and written by John Lennon) it gets in easily.
2. Maybe to write a good Christmas song these days you need a cause, be it anti-war, or anti-famine. I like "Do They Know it's Christmas?" which was written in 1984.
3. I like many of the original songs written by the Barenaked Ladies on their Christmas album, and my favorite (of the Christmas songs) is probably "Footprints". Also on there are "Green Christmas" and "Christmastime".
And this is about where I run out of ideas. I'm not all that big on Mariah Carey, giving my heart out for Christmas, or simply focusing on having a wonderful Christmas time. But maybe someone else has some ideas?
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