Is it just ME?

Or should cheesy Christmas pop tunes be banned?

I loved them once, but annual repetition has bludgeoned the life out of them

‘ IT’S Kerr- iiiiiistmaaaaas!’ Ah, the dulcet tones of Noddy Holder opening Slade’s festive classic, alerting us to that time of year: when our eardrums are assailed for around a month by the same tunes, the same choruses and the same lyrics over and over again.

Oceans may rise, empires fall, wars be won and fortunes lost, but whatever else happens in the world, December remains a month in which you are practically legally obliged to hear Shakin’ Stevens sing ‘Snow Is Fallin’’, at least 154 times.

Around a dozen Christmas pop songs are, in musical terms, indestructible. If World War III were to reduce the civilised world to ashes, somehow Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day would be transmitted from the last radio on earth. Musically, this is groundhog day. Boney M, Wham, Band Aid,

Mariah Carey and dozens more on a loop.

Most of these songs I loved once. It’s the annual repetition which has bludgeoned the life out of them.

I can hear the riposte: ‘Don’t listen, then, Scrooge!’ If only that were possible. But every shop, party, and TV ad is recycling the same old tunes.

Pity the shop assistants who endure weeks of Christmas cheese back-toback. One retailer, owner of The York Gin Shop, recently banned the pop classics to save the sanity of her staff. Bravo! Now can the rest of the High Street follow suit?

I’m not completely ‘bah humbug’ about Christmas music. Anything before 1960 is usually fine. Who doesn’t love wrapping presents while Bing Crosby dreams of a White Christmas? Or listening to the Carols from King’s, Cambridge?

It’s the cheese from the 70s, 80s and 90s that’s had its day. Please make it stop.