Long after we’re gone, Christmas songs will live on
Driving my kids around town means a lot of time listening to the radio. A short trip doesn’t justify the effort of picking my own music, so I take my chances with whatever is coming over the airwaves. The scan/seek buttons get a lot of use.
There aren’t many surprises on the radio. Since there are roughly six artists in a given genre in constant rotation, it’s always a little jarring when something unexpected catches your attention. That’s what happened in the car a few weeks ago, when it took me a minute to register that (1) I was hearing the Beach Boys and (2) I couldn’t remember the last time I heard a Beach Boys song on the radio.
This is, of course, one of the best-known bands of the past half-century, with more than 100 million albums sold along with an array of hits known to basically every American out of grade school.
But what I heard wasn’t one of those surfer hits — it was “Little Saint Nick,” and it was on because Christmas music is unavoidable in December. That’s not a value judgment — if you love Christmas music, that’s fine. But we’ve reached a point where the biggest acts in the world are being remembered for one possibly throwaway holiday song, or else not at all.
The Beach Boys’ best-known songs are basically gone from radio, at least the Connecticut and New York stations that come in around here. That’s part of a broader trend that’s seen the decline of what used to be called oldies radio. Anything recorded in the ’50s and ’60s is most likely to be enjoyed by people outside advertisers’ targeted demographics, so that format has mostly faded away. (Somehow, though, the Journey-saturated classic rock format is basically unchanged since I was in high school).
Over a 10year period between 2007 and 2017, stations with an oldies format dropped from 709 outlets nationally to 293, the largest decline of any category. It’s likely fallen more since then, and now exactly one of the dozens of radio stations in Connecticut that I could find reports that it uses that format (WATX, 1220 AM, in Hamden). The biggest gainer was what’s referred to as classic hits radio, which generally means top 40 songs from the mid-1970s to the 2000s. Even more chances to hear Journey.
It happens that I listened to oldies radio a lot as a kid. It gave the family something to agree upon in the car, and it meant I knew a lot of music from long before I was born. The Beach Boys, like many acts of their day, were huge long past their peak of popularity in part because they were constantly on the radio.
Not anymore. They’re in the process of turning into Brenda Lee.
Brenda Lee, for people who didn’t know (for instance, me), had 47 U.S. chart hits in the 1960s, good for fourth most in the entire decade, behind only the Beatles, Ray Charles and Elvis (a lot of them from his
Hard to imagine, but it could eventually be Elvis’ fate, too, since “Blue Christmas” is temporarily in heavy rotation, but he’ll mostly vanish from the airwaves for the next 11 months. The Beatles can probably get by a while longer, but there may come a day when its members’ collective output is best remembered for the guy who is simply having a wonderful Christmastime.
movies). She was a huge deal, inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and widely respected among her peers.
Today, she’s known by most anyone under 50 for exactly one song: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” An entire multi-decade career has been subsumed by two jaunty minutes played ad nauseum every year as everyone ponders the meaning of “the new old-fashioned way.”
This appears to be where the Beach Boys are headed. Hard to imagine, but it could eventually be Elvis’ fate, too, since “Blue Christmas” is temporarily in heavy rotation, but he’ll mostly vanish from the airwaves for the next 11 months. The Beatles can probably get by a while longer, but there may come a day when its members’ collective output is best remembered for the guy who is simply having a wonderful Christmastime.
More recent artists are in the same predicament. Mariah Carey may have more charttopping songs than any woman in history, but it’s already clear what she’ll be remembered for in 50 years, and it’s not any of her first 18 No. 1 hits. It’s the one that set a record two years ago as the first to drop straight from No. 1 to completely off the charts, because no one wants songs about mistletoe in January.
There’s a lesson here. If you want true longevity, if you want your grandkids’ grandkids to sing your praises, you’d better make sure you have a durable Christmas song. For that reason alone, Wham! will never die.
Alternatively, you’d be advised to have recorded a classic rock smash in 1978. They’ll be playing that stuff forever.