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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   2343 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 24, 2024

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It's almost Christmas again, which means every retail worker and most shoppers in general are dreading having to listen to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You about a sextillion times over the next month. This dread has become such a cliche to the extent that Carey herself has pointed it out after Halloween at least the past couple of years on social media, warning people that it's time to be assaulted by that song again.

My question is, does anyone else still unironically like that song*? I'm not particularly one for Christmas, but listening to that song everywhere is one of the parts I look forward to in December, and when I used to run for exercise, that song used to be one of the mainstays on my exercise playlist year-round. I'm not well versed enough in music to meaningfully explain why I like it so much, but I find the extremely sugary-sweet wholesome lyrics along with the melody to be exceedingly pleasant in a way that few other songs are.

* Edit: I meant anyone else today, after having been forced to listen to it so many times each and every December over the past few decades.

I hate it and have always hated it. However I can listen to Wonderful Christmas Time by McCartney and Last Christmas by Wham endlessly.

Funny, because my dad hates McCartney's Wonderful Christmas because it's so repetitive.

Ah, but see, a Christmas song should only be judged according to how well it represents the best feelings of the holiday. Christmas itself is repetitive: it occurs yearly, it’s a ritual, it’s always the same theme. And so it makes sense that McCartney’s song possesses a repetitive theme. You can’t fault him on this. It’s “simply having a wonderful Christmas time”, after all; there was never any pretention. “We’re here tonight, and that’s enough” — this is about our simple and familiar holiday respite.

But listen. Here’s why it’s a good song. Do you hear that synthesizer? That’s 80’s, and if 80’s is anything, it’s Americana and economic miracles. Christmas is the Americanaconomic holiday of note. And with its notes the song instantly says something interesting and true about Christmas. The melody is simple, and the structure mirrors a sequence of anticipation and glee. Christmas is a hyper-anticipatory holiday: not only does it fall around winter break, which we look forward to in school, but the actual activity of Christmas involves children anticipating and receiving gifts. Hence the chorus relieves the anticipatory tension of the verses with its ecstasic, relaxed, gleeful “simply, having”. Possession. Simplicity. Yet the ultimate joy of possession is not the material gift but the sufficient “here tonight”. A perfection summation.

Now there’s a bridge, also. But the bridge is actually mediocre, not because it strays from the theme but because it’s uninteresting. The bridge is stereotypical Christmas connotation and doesn’t add to the value of the song.

and Last Christmas by Wham endlessly.

Finally a man of culture around here!

I was never particularly enamored with the song to begin with, but I’m just as indifferent to it now as I was the first time I heard it.

Yes, obviously millions of people unironically like the song, which is why it was such a massive hit at the time and remains a mainstay now. Retail workers just get sick of it because they have to hear it dozens of times every day for a couple of months; that’s enough to make any song annoying. It’s an objectively top-tier pop song, and uses interesting chord structures that are more typical of early-20th-century jazz-inflected Christmas music than they are of modern, more musically simple pop music.

Sorry, I didn't word my question properly. I meant, does anyone else here, after having been saturated with that song each and every December over the past few decades following its release, still unironically enjoy listening to it on the sextillion-and-first time it's played in their vicinity?

I think I’d be annoyed by it if I had to hear it more than three times a day for any significant length of time. But I imagine that for anyone who isn’t spending a significant amount of daily time at malls, supermarkets, or other public locations where music is being piped in, one is unlikely to encounter the song that often every day.

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