Smackdown: Christmas Music

I think we were all surprised yesterday at the strong reactions provoked by our segment on Auto-Tune, the little software program that corrects pitch but which, when used as a “special effect,” produces that weird, warbling, almost robotic sound you hear in so much pop music these days (T-Pain, Kanye West, Lil Wayne). The phone lines were full throughout the show, and the comments started coming in before the segment even started. People really feel strongly that it’s cheating, that it masks poor singing, that it’s a cool effect, that it was a cool effect but it now being overused and becoming a cliché, or that it’s no big deal – just another part of the recording studio’s gear.

Well, if a little black box that’s been on the scene for 10 years can stir up all that trouble, what’s gonna happen today, when we debate one of the biggest issues facing music lovers during the holiday season? Yes, we’re debating Christmas music. Here again, people feel really strongly about it – some love it, find it puts them in a holiday mood, and simply can’t imagine Christmas without it; others hate it, find it intrusive, and feel they can’t escape its relentless repetition of jingling bells and talking snowmen and roasting chestnuts. In fact, you could argue that people feel more strongly about Christmas music than any other type of music – and I think there is a simple explanation for why: because most of us can’t control how much or which types of Christmas music we’re hearing. Stores, malls, TV and radio ads – they’re all playing Christmas music, and the playlist seems to a pretty restrictive one. Which means during the course of what is now at least a 6-week shopping season, you get to hear these songs a lot.

I’m one of those people who simply can’t ignore music, even if it’s meant as background. I can’t stand the easy listening stations that you hear in doctors’ and dentists’ offices because it tends to be song after song that I’d hoped never to have to hear again – and I’m powerless to stop hearing them again. Same thing with music in stores. Sometimes (not during the holiday season) a store will have something cool playing – I discovered Cold War Kids because a local cheese shop was playing one of their songs and I actually asked the person behind the counter what it was – but in general, one of the things I like about shopping online is that I don’t have to listen to someone else’s holiday playlist. Look, I like a lot of Christmas music. There is a lot of good seasonal music out there. Really. And I can’t imagine Christmas without it. But I think the problem many of us have with it is not the music itself, but our lack of control over it.

On tomorrow’s show, we’ll look at the BBC Music Magazine’s list of the 50 greatest carols – a list heavy on choral works, many of them barely known here in the States. If some of those pieces made onto holiday playlists, and you also started hearing the Duke Ellington version of the Nutcracker in stores, or Wynton Marsalis’s Crescent City Christmas, or Aimee Mann’s Another Drifter In the Snow, you might have a pretty cool holiday soundtrack. But realistically, the only way that’ll happen is if you do it yourself, at home.

Tell us: What do you think of Christmas music – love it or hate it? Or both? Leave a comment

[Photo: Flickr/Mike Schmid]