CHRISTMAS MUSIC SERIES

Our Need for NostalgiaĪnother key characteristic of Christmas songs is that they are, with rare exception, the same songs year after year. He points to Pink Floyd’s “ Another Brick in the Wall ,” which few would consider a Christmas song, that nonetheless topped the UK charts during Christmas week of 1979 - perhaps helped by its use of choral singing. “As soon as you introduce a choir, especially a children’s choir, you get that level of Christmas-ness,” he says. Sproston notes that tubular bells (which evoke the sound of church bells) are also a distinctive element, as well as choral singing. ”) This was a popular device during the 1950s and ‘60s, particularly in the holiday songs produced by Phil Spector, whose 1963 album A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector in many ways set the template for modern pop Christmas music. (Think of the cha-chung-cha-chung-cha-chung that keeps toes tapping throughout Mariah Carey’s “ All I Want for Christmas Is You. Additionally, 38 percent of the songs included sleigh bells and 35 percent used a broken triplet rhythm, or “swing rhythm,” that has a shuffle sound. Whether it’s “ O Come, All Ye Faithful ” or “ Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town ,” holiday songs work best when we can sing along to them as a group.īennett found the median average beats per minute (BPM) for these songs to be 115 - slightly below the average of popular music, which tends to be 120 - and 90 percent were in 4/4 time (also not too different from most other pop music). “People have got to pick up the melodies quite quickly so they can sing them in that community setting - but that’s also true of popular music and the hooks meant to draw in an audience so they have that ‘singability,’” Sproston says. He points out that this preference for up-tempo holiday can be traced back to traditional carols, written for congregational performance.

CHRISTMAS MUSIC SERIES

“In contemporary pop, the repertoire skews more toward a minor key.” Bennett adds that the dominance of the major key in Christmas music partly reflects the preference for “happy themes” during the chilly holiday season.ĭarren Sproston, director of the School of Arts and Media and deputy dean at the University of Chester in England, has delivered a series of lectures about the history and character of Christmas music. “Major keys in pop music are kind of more dated,” he says. Of the songs Bennett analyzed, 95 percent were in a major key. That nostalgia can be found in the technical aspects of the music, as well.

“Even though people are selling iPhones and PlayStations at Christmas, you don’t get that content in the lyrics.” Happy Sounds for the Holidays “The world of a Christmas song, in terms of visual imagery, is the in-person, analog world: firesides, snowfall, presents under the tree,” he says. The most obvious aspect of what makes a Christmas song is, of course, its lyrics - and Bennett found that the words used in these songs fit broadly into eight key themes including “home,” “in love,” “party,” “Santa” and “snow.” But the concept that connects all the themes, according to Bennett, is nostalgia. He looked at the lyrics, tempo, vocals and other elements of the 78 most-streamed holiday tunes on Spotify. Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, attempted to answer the question back in 2017. But what is it that makes Christmas music so distinct? While in some ways it might seem obvious, there are a few surprising characteristics of holiday songs that tell us as much about ourselves as our winter traditions. The familiar collection of sentimental tunes begins to take over airwaves and filter through coffee shop speakers around Thanksgiving weekend and essentially becomes the soundtrack for the entire month of December. It’s one of the most distinctive (or inescapable, depending on your perspective) elements of the holiday season: Christmas music.