Listen now | Selections from my 2007 Music Sampler that was designed to be instrumental background music with popular American Christmas songs written from 1930s to the early 1950s.
The parts of your presentation today that speak most to me are "The Christmas Song" (plus its write-up) and "Feliz Navidad." Thanks, Bill. By the way, I read elsewhere that you consider "bad Christmas music," including the majority of what's played on the radio, to be "a serious problem." For what it's worth, I lean the other way and am quite comfortable with most I hear on the radio. In any case, you are "the pro" re: this subject! Thank you so much for finding lots of good Christmas music for us.
You must be listening to a radio station that has well-curated music. Have you been out lately to hear the type of music that is piped into shopping malls, stores and restaurants?
My comments about "bad Christmas music" and it being a "serious problem" were in the context of Oxford University having named "brain rot" as its 2024 word of the year, defining it as "Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging." I was answering a question in a newsletter asking about online content that people think causes brain rot.
My reply was sincere but somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and was in reference to what a DJ friend of mine once referred to as "elevator music." Here they are in full:
I can think of lots of different media, not just online exposure, that lead to brain rot. I think the most insidious and dangerous of all is Christmas music (and I should know because I listen to a lot of it all year ‘round.) We don’t necessarily get this particular contagion online, but bad Christmas music is a serious problem and a significant source of brain rot.
Not all Christmas music is comprised of insipid lyrics, phony sentimentality, and overblown bombastic production values that assault our ears and brains. Just the vast majority of it. There is a very tiny proportion that is thoughtful and spirit-raising. But at this time of year bad Christmas music is everywhere and almost all of the songs we hear are countless covers of the same brain rotting pop songs that get inflicted upon us every year.
You can’t avoid hearing them and feeling the rot settling into your cranium. And the worst of it is the stuff that is foisted upon children!
And the situation is getting worse. In the name of “inclusivity” public performances and canned music are being purged of all of the songs that relate to the nativity story. Traditional Christmas carols also have far more than their share of banal brain-rotting covers, but far less so than their commercial Christmas music cousins.
Eliminating them doesn’t mean that we are getting less Christmas music. No, it means that we hear even more of the awful Christmas pop music. Enough for people’s brains to rot until they have turned to mush. All from bad Christmas music!
The best way to inoculate yourself from this source of brain rot is with a daily dose of vaccine comprised of 15 minutes of that very tiny portion of Christmas music which is not rot-inducing; Christmas music that has been winnowed down so that it includes hardly any brain-rot content at all.
Very relaxing music!
The parts of your presentation today that speak most to me are "The Christmas Song" (plus its write-up) and "Feliz Navidad." Thanks, Bill. By the way, I read elsewhere that you consider "bad Christmas music," including the majority of what's played on the radio, to be "a serious problem." For what it's worth, I lean the other way and am quite comfortable with most I hear on the radio. In any case, you are "the pro" re: this subject! Thank you so much for finding lots of good Christmas music for us.
Cheers,
Greg
Thanks, Greg.
You must be listening to a radio station that has well-curated music. Have you been out lately to hear the type of music that is piped into shopping malls, stores and restaurants?
My comments about "bad Christmas music" and it being a "serious problem" were in the context of Oxford University having named "brain rot" as its 2024 word of the year, defining it as "Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging." I was answering a question in a newsletter asking about online content that people think causes brain rot.
My reply was sincere but somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and was in reference to what a DJ friend of mine once referred to as "elevator music." Here they are in full:
I can think of lots of different media, not just online exposure, that lead to brain rot. I think the most insidious and dangerous of all is Christmas music (and I should know because I listen to a lot of it all year ‘round.) We don’t necessarily get this particular contagion online, but bad Christmas music is a serious problem and a significant source of brain rot.
Not all Christmas music is comprised of insipid lyrics, phony sentimentality, and overblown bombastic production values that assault our ears and brains. Just the vast majority of it. There is a very tiny proportion that is thoughtful and spirit-raising. But at this time of year bad Christmas music is everywhere and almost all of the songs we hear are countless covers of the same brain rotting pop songs that get inflicted upon us every year.
You can’t avoid hearing them and feeling the rot settling into your cranium. And the worst of it is the stuff that is foisted upon children!
And the situation is getting worse. In the name of “inclusivity” public performances and canned music are being purged of all of the songs that relate to the nativity story. Traditional Christmas carols also have far more than their share of banal brain-rotting covers, but far less so than their commercial Christmas music cousins.
Eliminating them doesn’t mean that we are getting less Christmas music. No, it means that we hear even more of the awful Christmas pop music. Enough for people’s brains to rot until they have turned to mush. All from bad Christmas music!
The best way to inoculate yourself from this source of brain rot is with a daily dose of vaccine comprised of 15 minutes of that very tiny portion of Christmas music which is not rot-inducing; Christmas music that has been winnowed down so that it includes hardly any brain-rot content at all.
If your brain is worth protecting, or if you know anyone whose is, go to https://midwintermusic.substack.com/to sign up for your free daily antidote.