Time for the Christmas music rant

There's only about half a dozen Christmas songs that I love to hear every year. The rest are like fingernails on a chalk board.
I love Christmastime and what it represents, and I LOVE NEW Christmas songs. Every year a band comes out with a Christmas album that usually contains 98% traditionals, and maybe a couple new songs they created that have that Christmas feel, or lyrics about the birth of our Savior. Those are the songs I like.

My rant is this - Here's the reason I cannot stomach Christmas music anymore: Let me illustrate by an example: Take Stryper's Yellow and Black album. They were the original writers and performers... then Guardian came along and offered up their interpretation of the exact same songs - it was COOL ! It was nice to hear those songs I loved so much being performed by another band. Now take this same concept and have every single band in existence perform all the songs off of Yellow and Black every year - from Neil Diamond to Linda Ronstadt, from Underoath to Motley Crue to everyone in between... every year a new band releases these SAME songs from Taylor Swift to Miley Cyrus and the list goes on.

You get my point ?
I would be SO SICK of hearing "From Wrong to Right" and "You won't be lonely" being played on the radios every December by Los Lobos to Jose Feliciano, Madonna to Little River Band...

I would never want to listen to Stryper's first release ever again.

Your thoughts ?

I can sort of understand but I enjoy the different takes on those songs. TSO and Los Lobos are world's apart musically so it's still fresh to my ear.

oh see what you did there ? TSO is one of my weaknesses   - I totally love them ! But what they do is far from the rest, they have something unique to offer and that's why I love them.

It's making a trip to the supermarket for some bread and hearing the 3,428th version of Rudolf the red nose reindeer that I cannot STAND !!!!!!

I couldn't get into TSO.  They are good musicians, but the music is overrated to me.

As far as Christmas music, I also love to hear NEW songs.  I get tired of the same regurgitated crap by dozens of artists.  The exception to that rule is when an artist can take those songs, inject their own style into them, and come out sounding like they wrote the tune.  Avalon (the CCM pop band) has a Christmas album like that with a few originals mixed in.  The Brian Setzer Orchestra also has that as well.  The Gaither Vocal Band managed that level of awesomeness with their album several years ago.  Even Third Day managed to do that to a certain point for me.  They are the same songs, but they brought a new life to them.

It isn't just with Christmas music either.  I hate hearing 50 different Christian artists recording the same ol' worship tunes over and over.  Really?  How many versions of "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone" or "Lord, I Lift Your Name On High" do I really need?  Surely a successful recording artist could do one of two things:  A)  write or hire writers to help you create original worship songs, or B) pick out worship songs that are a bit more obscure and rework those to sound more original.  Just because it's on either the new Passion CD or the new Hillsongs album doesn't mean it is going to be a hit for you.

Truthfully, unless an artist can really recreate either of these genres to the point that the songs sounds like it was yours to begin with, it just looks like the artist and/or label pushing to make some money off of someone's already successful song.  You can repackage a turd 10,000 times, but it is still a turd.  Even with good songs, too much of the same thing is just repackaging to push a product and shows a total lack of creativity or care about the subject material in my opinion.

Now, off to work on the new Mission Of One Christmas/Worship album. 

I second that !

Quote :

Now, off to work on the new Mission Of One Christmas/Worship album. 

I'm looking forward to that.

There are only a few Christmas songs I really like.

Someone managed to blend Christmas and worship by rewriting "Joy To The World" with a modern chorus.

I really like TSO, great music. Are far as standard Christmas music goes, we have digital music that plays at work, and we get to hear about 20 "different" versions of 3 different songs over & over everyday...... sheesh, it does get old!

However, I do like a good old fashion Christmas carol sing along :p

I think because i'm not forced to listen to Christmas music it doesn't get old for me. I have the ones I like and play them when I want. Take the Merry Axemas albums, a redo of the classics but in an awesome manner.

I like Merry Axemas along with the Ho Ho Hoey! albums.  Not to mention TSO.  Good stuff!

Don't forget the Monster Ballads Christmas--which isn't really full of ballads.  It's also metal renditions of Christmas songs.

I don't listen to Christmas music very much. If I'm listening to Christmas music, it's probably being forced on me. I don't mind too much. There are some Christmas songs that I like.

I recorded a Christmas Instrumental Rock CD in 2011 called In the Christmas Groove. You can hear it at BandCamp:  https://derekclose.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-christmas-groove

Nice stuff there dood.

Thank you, Sir!

I love the classic stuff, Big Crosby, Sinatra, Andy Williams, Burl Ives, Perry Como.... Love that old stuff and own a lot of it on vinyl... In fact I'm gonna go spin some now.

I know what you mean MikeInFla, my Mom played those records every Christmas when I was growing up (with Elvis's being her favorite) - so today I can listen to those records and have good memories.

To me, they were the originals (with some exceptions, I know they weren't the originals) so every band since Bing who's done and overdone White Christmas for the 6000th time is what drives me up the wall as I get older.
Back to my illustration. If I heard a zillion versions of Stryper's "From Wrong to Right", then one day walked into a store and they played the original Stryper version... I'd have a sense of nostalgia and probably wouldn't mind it so much. Same with Bing. If I go to a store and hear The Backstreet Boys slaughtering White Christmas, or Mariah Carey screaming it to death, I want to shove wine corks into my ears... but if a store were playing Bing or even Elvis' version of White Christmas, I may feel a little different about it.
But all in all, I will skip a couple Christmas' before I play those albums... I can't do it every year, I think cuz the years go by so fast, it seems like we were JUST doing all this Christmas stuff just a couple months ago ! Sheesh !

Is that the rap version of Bing?

Me-thinks you need to listen to The Crossing's The Court of a King.  There's some different Christmas music for you

Hey Mike, I only just found out what your avatar is… KILROY!

danielbandfan wrote:

Hey Mike, I only just found out what your avatar is… KILROY!

Ha! Yep! Been a Styx fan since I was a kid and had recently been listening to 1983's Kilroy Was Here.

Was just listening to Theocracy Christmas music last night.

Through The Dark Radio wrote:

Me-thinks you need to listen to The Crossing's The Court of a King.  There's some different Christmas music for you

Sweet! I enjoy Celtic music.

Also liked Xid's Christmas Groove. Some interesting interpretations. I was curious if there was some clipping (esp on first track) or was that because of lo-fi for the website? Would love to get to Glacier NP someday, too!

Thanks, Top!  That was my first home recording done in '11. I've learned a few things since then.

I compared the tracks on my computer to the ones up for listening on Bandcamp.  They must have lo-fi for streaming.

OK. I noticed it on God Rest Ye and What A Child, too, so good to know it's not on the downloads.

You're a bit older than Matt Smith, but he was doing it all himself at the start as well. Look at him now!