it’s the most annoying freaking songs ever recorded Time of Year
If you do or have worked in retail you’ll know what I mean. Even if you just shop in retail stores you can quickly get a feel for how annoying the music is this time of year. They start before Thanksgiving, throwing in a few holiday tunes here and there. After Thanksgiving it really ramp up, so that by December it is full bore winter/Christmas songs over the loudspeakers.
Image source: Kris de Curtis via Flikr
The real tragedy is that it is a certain small selection of Christmas songs that get played in retail stores this time of year. Over and over and over again. WTF?! They must be either completely free or very low royalties on those particular songs. That is the only reason I can think of why it is such a small set of songs, when there is a wide variety of more current and diverse holiday music available in the world to choose from.
I feel aggravated listening to these annoying freaking Christmas songs while I work all day, even vaguely homicidal at moments. Someone please tie me a noose so I can hang the person that invented this retail tradition.
In spite of all my animosity (which is generous in volume) it’s still nice to listen to some good holiday songs at home sometimes, especially while doing things like baking cookies or trimming the tree. So I’m creating a Youtube playlist of songs that we actually like. And I want suggestions, so if you have favorites, please let me know what they are in the comments below. I’ll kick things off by sharing one with you, this is Sarah Mclachlan singing Silent Night:
44 comments on “it’s the most annoying freaking songs ever recorded Time of Year”
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The Honking Goose 
good job!
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beautiful…good job!
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I like Christmas songs but agree that they sometimes take it too far.
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true that….same here
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That version of Silent Night is delectable! So smooth. I could listen to it all day.
I do like Christmas music/songs/whathaveyou, but even too much of a good thing is still too much. Most of the songs/carols I like, can be annoying if played over and over and over again.
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Thank you for this lovely link really has made my day love it , so gentle .
Glad you were able to relax and listen to this when you got home .
Kind Regards and Happy Days. Kathy.
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Peanuts Christmas piano music. But only when tree trimming. I was thinking of writing about the severe cheese factor of Christmas music but I just don’t want to think about how annoying it is. Bah humbug.
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I’m thinking they play the same “pop” songs over-and-over because the average shopper doesn’t spend 8 hours in the store . . . like you. You get the worst of it. I don’t recall hearing a Christmas song yet this year, but, then, I don’t shop much. Concerning songs, I like to listen to Mario Lanza’s Christmas album from the early 1960s, I believe, though my wife and kids don’t like it at all. If you don’t like to listen to operatic tenors singing, you wouldn’t like Lanza. It’s considerably slower and more dramatic than the more modern stuff . . and more blah, according to my family. My father played it each year when I was a little kid so I have memories attached to it.
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I forgot to say thanks for the McLachlan. Sarah and her piano are my home-town heroes.
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If you can find Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band’s live version of The Little Drummer Boy on YouTube, I think you’ll like it. When that ex-biker starts to belt out a few Rum Pa Pa Pum’s, the shepherds would surely stand up and take notice. You don’t hear that one too often in department stores. Read you later.
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Absolute rock bottom for me is ‘White Christmas’ crooned in every store when the temperature is 30+ C outside. If they’re dreaming of a white Christmas, they’re on the WRONG CONTINENT!
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It’s not only in stores. I don’t listen to the radio in my spare time, but since I spend 180+ hours at work every month (a lot of +++), where the radio is ALWAYS on, I get the chance to listen to all the s*** that is called the charts. To be certain, they’re not all bad, and they play songs that have survived the charts, but there not even a snowball’s chance to avoid the annoying X-Mas “music”. I like old-fashioned X-mas music, sometimes so old that it’s in Latin. I may not believe in Christ the Savior, but in his name people made incredible art.
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I’m with you. Christmas carols – yes, Christmas ‘music’ – nail on a blackboard.
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Nothing will ever beat Friday by Rebecca Black. Ever.
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I don’t work in retail, and as it happens I don’t spend that much time in stores. Christmas shopping tends to be real short by default– I’m the only member of my Dad’s family who is NOT a Jehovah’s Witness, and they don’t celebrate Christmas. So– that leaves the radio in my van. The Christian stations I usually listen to are running just about every Christmas song ever written, and the Country stations are running— uh– the standard drinking and cheating songs they usually run probably right up until a couple of days before Christmas when they, too, will run nothing but Christmas music.
I usually run with the radio “off” actually…. seems it gets me to thinking about things I’d rather not, so best to leave it off.
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Mary Chapin Carpenter has a whole album of lovely Christmas music. Most of it is new, or unknown, including several she wrote. “Why would anybody want to hear me sing the regular old stuff was her thought in making the album. Come Darkness, Come light. Emmy Lou Harris has. Great album, too, a light in the stable.
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My favorites are One Bright Star (This Christmas Night) – Nicolette Larson, and Christmas in the Caribbean – Jimmy Buffett
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I feel your pain. I celebrated insanely the day Walmart radio died.
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I dislike xmas, because my ex has ruined it in every way possible, since 07. I don’t bother to buy the children anything or put up a tree, because it’s a competition, he has taken all the enjoyment out of it. And xmas music, sigh my neighbors have their lights blinking to every song you can imagine, I don’t have the heart to tell them I hate it. So I have to endure it from thanksgiving to New Years, from dark to midnight! It’s not loud, it’s like don’t laugh, really soft like your not sure your hearing it, but then you hear “here comes santa” and your like oh my god, seriously I am in my bed and I can’t escape it!
NIBSIH
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I have problems with any kind of “piped” music, elevator music, anything in department stores, mainly because I selfishly prefer to CHOOSE what I want to listen to WHEN I want to hear it 😉 Someone else’s selection is forced on me and that’s mostly just annoying 😉
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Rudolph the Red Nose Raindeer always meant a drunken driver to me.
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Yikes! That sounds dangerous…
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I saw this You-Tube video just moments ago, and immediately thought of your reply here. Cheer up, Rudolph goes to rehab. Note: Sorry about the sloppy linking, but I really don’t yet know how to put a video into a comment properly– still gotta poke these things with a stick a bit more.
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Geez, that worked better than I thought. Who knew?
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Rehab with Doc. Drew. You know many of his patients went down the tubes. I believe Rudolph has been cloned and his shinny red nose now comes in many shades. Yellow, green and ultramarine. Many airplane pilots have thought him to be a drone. P.S. Rudolph has gas and the other reindears have made a petition to have Rudolph bring up the rear.
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They won’t let me choose the songs to play in retail stores at Christmas-time. Now you know why.
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The shops would not dare play their favourate song
Jingle Tills Jingle Tills
Jingle all day long
o what fun it is to rob the stupid Christians blind
HEY!
[[Repeat until the profit is at least 6 percent higher than last year}}
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LOL nice one!
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I’m not Christmassy. I hate Christmas music and truth of the matter is, if I hadn’t had a kid I probably wouldn’t even celebrate.
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I don’t like Christmas at all. But like you, I have kids… and my kids have grandparents…. and so it goes. I wanted to just celebrate Solstice when we had kids and my husband talked me into the Christmas thing, which I have regretted every year for the past ten years.
Last year, I talked my family into celebrating Solstice instead, and it was lovely (as pagans, we still get to have a tree – my favorite part!). But my husbands parents still insisted on coming Christmas day and we had to celebrate with them.
This year, we’re going to my parents house for Christmas day. It’s so complicated with extended family. Sometimes, I wish they’d all just bug off about the holiday crap. But I love them, anyway. 🙂
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My best friend is Pagan and her husband celebrates Christmas. They both celebrate winter solstice and in turn she is willing to celebrate Christmas. So they get a tree every year and because he actually likes Christmas they exchange one gift usually something they need or something little. She doesn’t have the problem with extended family though because her’s lives in Md and his is back in England.
I do like the trees and the lights, but not the holiday.
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It’s not much better on Sirius XM, you’d think satellite radio would have more options. the short playlists are very annoying. I’ll take the instrumental versions if anything! In fact, Doug Warren’s blog always has nice music highlighted for spotify.
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Maybe it’s a conspiracy 😉
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Silent Night is a good one. The thing is when I sing this glass breaks and dogs howl.. (LOL) I am a soprano.:p
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I like Silent Night, too, I have the Sarah Mclachlan version on my playlist – and a reggae version by Pablo Black. 🙂
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Christmas overload. D:
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I worked in a department store from September-February one year and I swore never again. I get flashbacks when I hear “Santa, baby.”
I have an odd taste in music, so it flows into my holiday music as well. Even though I celebrate Yule instead of Christmas, I enjoy certain songs regardless. A couple of my favourites is “Christmas at Ground Zero” by Weird Al and “Christmastime” by Smashing Pumpkins. I also love “Merry Merry Merry Frickin Christmas” by Frickin A and every song on from the South Park selection of holiday songs (like “Merry Fucking Christmas” and “Christmastime in Hell”).
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That Weird Al song is a little obnoxious, but I’ll have to add it to my playlist anyway. My kids are huge fans. My 10yo thinks Weird Al is the height of human musical achievement. 😀 I like the Smashing Pumpkins one….
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I remember one winter I worked nights in an AEO store–115 songs played over and over from Thanksgiving until Christmas. Yep, I kept track. I dig on Christmas swing these days–from big band WW2 vintage through the cocktail years of Frank, Dean, Sammy, & Company. It’s the later stuff–George Michael’s “Last Christmas” and Mariah Carey “All I Want For Christmas Is You” that drive me madder than a hatter. Oh, and that reggae song you clipped up there is brutal–shame on you for making us listen to it.
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Hey, we can’t all be perfect…. 😉
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I suspect your store’s playlist is so short because they’re trying to avoid playing too much religious music and stirring up criticism from the Politically Correct. When I want to get into a Christmas mood I listen to (and sing along with) a recording of the Hallelujah Chorus sung by a choir I was in ten years ago. I still get a wonderful rush listening to that. But most Christmas music leaves me cold.
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I’m pretty sure it’s not just that. Because there are more current versions of the same songs they already play that aren’t in the mix.
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Sometimes, this is the disadvantage of being an employee.
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So true.
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