Perhaps something is appealing in the perception that people - without necessarily meaning to - have sent something to the top of a public list, indicating that many others enjoy it. Chart positions represent a ranking arrived at nationally, suggesting a consensus, even if you were not among those who supported the winner. While the metrics have changed across the decades, the principle of success has not. The number one place is the result of a popularity contest among music fans. Perhaps this sense of sharedness pushes the significance of Christmas week’s number one beyond that of whatever is at the top of the charts at any other time of the year. Looking at the influence of Victorian Britain on modern Christmas celebrations, the musicologist Sheila Whiteley highlights the importance of family (both literal and the wider idea), as well as a “utopia of shared values”. These factors, among others, might help explain why we gravitate towards such music at this time of year. Its participatory quality and way of gathering memories and associations lend themselves to ritual and strong personal resonances. How Frith characterises this residual class of music resonates strongly with typical Christmas music.Īs he also points out, such music, despite its purported banality, can be put to affecting use. The leftover category of “pop”, loosely defined, is designed to appeal to everyone: often family-orientated, musically conservative, professionally produced, unobtrusive, and a conduit for cliché and commonplace emotional states like “love, loss, jealousy”. In trying to define pop, the rock writer Simon Frith considered it to be what is left when one strips away rock, country and the other venerable popular genres. ![]() One has only to look at the list of Christmas number ones to see on the one hand their variety, but on the other, how they gravitate towards a particular type of popular music. This upset, however, is a departure from the norm. I suspect listeners did not need an excuse to rebel against X Factor’s then-monopoly, but the fact that the campaign happened at Christmas suggests that the rebels found a cause. It indicated that some people care whether the number one position goes to another schmaltzy ballad. ![]() It was everything Christmas songs are not, or at least not supposed to be (although there is certainly some form of protest, albeit of a less revolutionary kind, in John Lennon’s Happy Xmas and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas). Look no further than the successful campaign in 2009 to install Rage Against the Machine’s Killing In The Name at the top of the UK chart and prevent yet another X Factor single from being number one. People notice the music’s political and ideological trajectory and can mount a rebellion when they feel that the falseness has gone too far. Yet for all the ways it is easy to tire of Christmas songs’ excesses, to many people it matters what music we should value at this time of year. For over a month, this music is ubiquitous: people do not necessarily pay for or try to hear it, but it’s there anyway, like acoustic wallpaper. Certain sounds, too, like sleigh bells, the celeste, the glockenspiel, and a choir also signal the holiday. These include a major key, an accessible pitch range and a moderate tempo, making them both easier to sing and easier on the ear. Plenty of explicitly Christmas-themed songs will have certain musical characteristics, even though they’re always optional. ![]() We know Christmas music when we hear it, but it’s not always obvious what features (if any) it needs to have to pass the yuletide test. But what does it really take to propel a song to the coveted spot during another COVID Christmas? And what makes for good Christmas music - the kind that we want to consume throughout the festive season? This year, it looks like LadBaby will steal their fourth chart win in a row - a new record if successful - with a song featuring Elton John and Ed Sheeran. There is probably no chart position more fought over than the Christmas number one.
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