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Christmas music - the verdict

I did my bit for the cause today - I went into Tesco and immediately heard ‘Stop the Cavalry’ playing. It would have been bad enough had it been Slade, Wham, Wizzard or any of the other usual suspects, but that song annoys me particularly as it seems to have been adopted as a Christmas anthem simply because it has the word ‘Christmas’ in it. I decided to vote with my feet, went straight back out and down the road to Morrisons.

I expect I’ll be doing a lot of grocery shopping online for the next three or four weeks.
 
Morrisons today had a jazzy version of "call me" on when we arrived, followed by the dreaded "silver bells", bah humbug.
 
One has to begrudgingly admire those who create such songs. I bet Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody took them half an hour or so to write, a day to record and will have made everyone in the band a multi-millionaire with a new hefty pay-cheque popping through the door every year. If I was ever to try to assemble a JAMS The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way type hit it would unquestionably be some god-awful Christmas shite as it has so much more life-span/paycheque potential! A near bottomless money pit if one gets it right...
 
Alex N said:
vuk, where do you stand on Michael Bublé?
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i would like to stand on his head in such a way that it prevents his mouth from opening.

[ i never thought any Christmas singer could annoy me more than jonny mathis ]
 
Tony L said:
One has to begrudgingly admire those who create such songs. I bet Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody took them half an hour or so to write, a day to record and will have made everyone in the band a multi-millionaire with a new hefty pay-cheque popping through the door every year. If I was ever to try to assemble a JAMS The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way type hit it would unquestionably be some god-awful Christmas shite as it has so much more life-span/paycheque potential! A near bottomless money pit if one gets it right...
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Same goes for Roy Wood I imagine.

Good thing the Slade and Wood songs are unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Instead we must endure John & Yoko's dreary Xmas dirge every year, and The Kinks' "Father Christmas".
 
Tony L said:
If I was ever to try to assemble a JAMS The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way type hit it would unquestionably be some god-awful Christmas shite as it has so much more life-span/paycheque potential! A near bottomless money pit if one gets it right...
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I imagine this was foremost in Chrissie Hynde’s mind when she offered up her contribution to the genre - from memory it goes something like

Baby’s go-oo-oo-oo-one
Thousands of mi-ii-ii-ii-iles
It’s very far!!!
er... tum-ti-tum
and la-la-la
and (Oh yes) CHRISTMAS TIME!!
(Kling klang klong)

Kerching!
 
Yank said:
Same goes for Roy Wood I imagine.

Good thing the Slade and Wood songs are unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Instead we must endure John & Yoko's dreary Xmas dirge every year, and The Kinks' "Father Christmas".
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The Slade song is apparently good for half a £million a year (NME)! Not bad for a days work or whatever back in 1973!
 
Tony L said:
I bet Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody took them half an hour or so to write, .....
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The story goes that when travelling with the band Noddy Holder went into a hotel room on his own with a bottle of whisky to write a Christmas song and came out in the morning with ... that bloody song and his pension worries disappeared.
 
Slightly off topic but Gerry Rafferty was on £80K a year for Baker St, it's no wonder he drank himself to death with that sort of income every year from just one song.

Stuck in the middle with you must have made him a fortune too especially after Tarantino got to grips with it.

Both great songs though and no comparison to that slade pish and the other shite.

BTW, Micheal Buble did a version of SITMWY.
 
gassor said:
The story goes that when travelling with the band Noddy Holder went into a hotel room on his own with a bottle of whisky to write a Christmas song and came out in the morning with ... that bloody song and his pension worries disappeared.
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The story I read was that they had already written the song but thought the lyrics were rubbish, so wrote some Christmassy ones instead for the reasons mentioned above.
 
I wish Buble and his family very best wishes, particularly his son Noah, who is suffering from hepatoblastoma, a form of liver cancer.
 
Bob McC said:
I wish Buble and his family very best wishes, particularly his son Noah, who is suffering from hepatoblastoma, a form of liver cancer.
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Michael Buble is back pefroming I believe, think he's doing a Christmas gig in London this month.
 
Marchbanks said:
The story I read was that they had already written the song but thought the lyrics were rubbish, so wrote some Christmassy ones instead for the reasons mentioned above.
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Checked Wiki and it says what you wrote but with a few details.

After an evening out drinking, Holder worked through the night at his mother's house in Walsall to write the lyrics, which he completed in one draft.[
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. The whisky bottle would have made it seem more heroic.

Bit more - Lea and Holder pick up circa £250k a year in royalties while the other two "Can be found during the winter months playing at Butlins and on cruise ships, and during the summer they are slogging out their old hits on the festival circuit." Where's there a hit .........
 
When was the last time a new Christmas song made it onto the supermarket / shopping centre / department store CD? Last one I can place is Mariah Carey and that must be 25 years old by now.
 
Some ex-band mates released this one through my label a few years ago...we couldn't get any airplay. In fact it was the only release I remember getting no national airplay at all. It was quite good too

 
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