Over the past few weeks, I have been listening, in small doses, to the Christmas radio station, 94.9 FM. I'm curious as to how this awful phenomenon not only survives, but begins at an earlier date each November. While I don't have a definitive answer to that question, I have noticed that there are really only five types of songs played on the holiday station.
The first type is the classic Rat Pack-era rendition of a Christmas classic. These are the songs that taught us Christmas traditions, like reindeer names and the Hawaiian word for Christmas. They evoke a nostalgia for some vision of Rockwellian Americana - one where your drunk uncle didn't urinate on the plastic manger scene in the front lawn, and children were grateful for the oranges and hard candy in their stockings instead of throwing fits because their parents bought them NFL 2K8"" instead of ""Madden."" These Norman Rockwell Christmas tunes aren't that bad.
The second type is the Manheim Steamroller/Trans-Siberian Orchestra instrumental song. The main purpose of these songs is to make you feel vaguely less wussy about listening to a light rock station playing music by artists you normally wouldn't be caught dead listening to. A side benefit of these songs is that you don't have to worry about getting the lyrics right when you sing along. Instead of tripping through the words only to realize that the singer changed the lyrics to ""make it their own,"" you are free to ""jah-jigga-jah-jah"" and ""meedly-meedly"" all on your own. Add some enthusiastic air-guitaring and you have a sure recipe to make your significant other question their life choices.
Next is the Celine Dion-style Christmas anthem, which tends to contain more religious or overtly emotional songs. You can recognize these songs by the soaring, climactic high note somewhere near the end of the song. These songs are often accompanied by your mom sniffling, ""Oh, I just love Josh Groban's voice."" Any other mother in the room is biologically programmed to add, ""I know, his music is so beautiful. Why can't the music you kids listen to be like that? It is so loud, with all that yelling and hip-hop.""
Then there's the modern remake of a previously popular holiday song. I briefly mentioned the evils of these songs last week. My theory is that the ""holiday spirit"" affects everyone differently. For instance, it causes your grandmother to shop but prompts your douche-bag roommate to put on a Santa hat and invite girls to sit on his lap. For musicians, this magical ""spirit"" inspires crappy covers of already overplayed songs and makes light rock stations swoon at the idea of Faith Hill covering Christmas hymns.
The fifth, and final, category is the song ""The Christmas Shoes."" Somehow, this song is so blatantly over-emotive and sappy that it defies any attempt to be categorized with other, less heart-wrenching songs. This song is used at least once every 30 minutes to balance out the other 27 minutes of upbeat songs full of holiday cheer. Then, the DJ allows 27 more minutes to regain his composure before playing it again.
I'm sure these categories aren't perfect, but I'm sure some radio station will begin their Christmas music sometime in October next year, so I'll have plenty of time to figure it out what I missed.
Think Dale left something out? Send your heavy metal Christmas hits to dpmundt@wisc.edu.
