Christmas music plus#
It’s a hoot, but a little of the chorus’s “ee-HAW, ee-HAW” goes a long way.Įlmo & Patsy’s 1979 tale of a Christmas Eve tragedy, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” is a bit too twisted to jibe with many people’s idea of the Christmas spirit.Īdam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song” (1994, plus three updates) offers up a litany of famous Jews, a few PG-rated lyrics and some pretty great rhymes - “marijuanica,” “gin and tonica,” “Tijuanica” - and requires a certain sense of humor (a working knowledge of Hanukkah tradition helps, too).Īh, but once in a while, a supposed “novelty song” turns out to be universal after all. New York-area earworm “Dominick the Donkey,” recorded by Lou Monte in 1960, is sprinkled with Italian vocabulary and tells the story of a donkey that delivers Brooklyn-made presents to kids in Italian hills too steep for reindeer. “It gives you that charming feeling of what a nice idea,” said Bennett, “but it’s not a universal sentiment.” The genre is not new - it developed right alongside the canon during the creative exploration of songwriters in the 1950s, Simos said.įor example, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” recorded in a startlingly Ethel-Merman-like voice by 10-year-old Gayla Peevey in 1953, has a clever conceit: a child making an unreasonable demand. Rather than aiming for universality, novelty songs address a specific theme or appeal to a certain slice of people. Just like there is a canon for traditional holiday songs, there’s a canon of sorts for novelty songs, which are too goofball-niche to enter the Serious Traditional Canon but are also too much fun to not play every year.
“You can have your prediction violated but find it wonderful.” It works the same with music, Rabinovitz said. It’s why many of us like surprise parties and roller coasters even though they’re initially terrifying. But if the surprise is not too drastic, he said, our brains might decide they like the change - and then they are often happier than if there had been no surprise in the first place. Our brains feel rewarded when they correctly predict what happens next, and if a prediction is wrong, we feel momentarily discombobulated. Rabinovitz provided a neurological explanation for why we like covers: They meet our expectations. That way, people can “have all of the sound quality they expect in a modern recording from a contemporary artist while getting all the nostalgic feelings that we want from the songwriter.” “He’s choosing very old songs played with classic old school, big-band arrangements, but he’s recording them with contemporary technology that makes them radio air-play friendly,” Bennet said. Of course, almost all of these Christmas songs are great for kids, especially when you're baking cookies or wrapping presents together.Īnd don't be surprise if some of the lyrics turn out to be inspiration for your Christmas Instagram captions or help you when trying to decide what to write in your holiday cards.Source: Data based on Joe Bennett’s analysis of top 200 Spotify UK song streams from the week of Dec. And there are plenty of R&B and religious-based numbers as well. We have some of the most popular country jingles centered around Christmastime, including the best holiday hits from Dolly Parton. We've got classics (think traditional numbers like " The 12 Days of Christmas" and "Jingle Bells"), as well as modern Christmas songs from Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, Kelly Clarkson and more. We've put together the ultimate Christmas playlist that includes all of your favorite merry tunes. If you happen to be one of those people who can’t wait to belt out the best Christmas songs of all time, have we got a treat for you. But let's be honest, listening to Christmas carols on repeat starts way before December 25. There are very few holidays where a great playlist is needed to make your day more fun.
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