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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.01: 2022:
#AceChristmasNews - Why Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You is an enduring hit, while most new holiday songs tank
Mariah Carey's hit All I Want for Christmas is You is at the top of Billboard's Holiday Hot 100 chart.(Island Records)none
It's about that time when people start shopping for gifts, putting up their Christmas trees, and pressing play on songs they haven't listened to in a year.
While Christmas carols remain a mainstay on many playlists during the holiday season, there are a host of artists who have tried to enter the fray of the highly lucrative Christmas songs market.
Lucrative, that is, if you're successful. That success is rare.
When American pop star Mariah Carey applied to trademark the phrase "Queen of Christmas", a United States court recently denied her application.
But her 1994 track All I Want for Christmas Is You is the type of hit most artists could only dream of.
Charlie Harding is a songwriter and co-host of the Vulture podcast Switched on Pop, which explores the making and meaning of popular music.
"Christmas is both a sacred holiday and it is also the zenith of capitalism," Harding told the ABC.
"And the idea of trying to blend the use of a royal title with a trademark or copyright and a dispute about that feels extremely of this moment."
Switched on Pop this week re-shared last year's holiday episode called:Why do new Christmas songs fail?
Harding's co-host, musicologist Nate Sloan points out if you head to Billboard's Holiday Hot 100 chart, you'll find only four songs from the past decade have made it into the top 50.
The number one song overall is, of course, All I Want for Christmas Is You.
The next song on the list is from the 1950s – Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, which was first released in 1958.
"It's pretty clear that you and I find comfort in the classics," Sloan said to Harding on the podcast.
"And we're not alone."
So, why do most new Christmas songs struggle to have lasting impact?
"You have to be careful about what you say when you're deconstructing a masterpiece," Harding said of Carey's song.
"There are many elements [that make it successful].
"One of the first elements that comes to mind for me is the fact that the song is written in a much older style of songwriting.
"Successful holiday songs are largely from the classical pop era."Musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding host Vulture's Switched on Pop podcast.(Supplied)none
Harding told the ABC that Christmas songs are often entrenched in nostalgia and are about remembering the past.
"The music that we think of as holiday music is primarily from before the 60s," he said.
"There aren't a lot of contemporary songs."
He said new Christmas songs often fail because modern music is fundamentally structured differently to music from the 50s and 60s.
"And so, if you're writing a Christmas song today, you might be writing it in the wrong structure," he said.
"You are using all the right sounds, you're referencing snow, Christmas trees, the scarves you wear, the hats you wear, you put sleigh bells in the sounds, you use older style chord progressions that we would have heard in the 50s and 60s, but if you're writing a song in today's structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, there's something about that that just doesn't quite fit.
"It's like the difference between filming on analogue and digital or something.
"It doesn't sound right.
"So, one of the tricks is making sure that you write a song in that old style."
He said Christmas songs are one of the hardest forms of music to nail.
"It's one of the rare cultural forms where novelty is not the cultural capital.
"Cultural capital in holiday music is familiarity.
"It's about referencing a specific era.
"And so, you have to thread this almost impossible needle where you have to make something that sounds old while introducing it to a new audience."
"The first year is never going to be its most successful year because it's too novel.
"All good holiday music is older and reminds you of the holiday before."
If the Queen (or King) of Christmas was a thing, who would be the other contemporary contenders?
Harding told the ABC no one who has released a song in the past decade comes close to Carey.
Way, way, way further down the list, you'll find contemporary artists such as Kelly Clarkson with Underneath the Tree, Ariana Grande with Santa Tell Me, Justin Bieber with Mistletoe and the Jonas Brothers with Like It's Christmas.
"I don't think that it will be like this forever," Harding said.
"I know new songs will happen.
"But I think it is one of the most difficult pantheons to enter and if you do, you're going to buy your great great, great, great grandkids' house, so I bet people will keep on trying."
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