Fuck boomer Christmas. Claymation sucks. Charlie Brown is boring. Frosty should’ve been left to melt. And ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ bombed at the box office for a reason. Just because it was dirt-cheap for TV stations to air during the Holidays in the late '70s/'80s doesn’t make it good.
This is bizarre. And it’s weird that after the boomers die off a similar thing won’t happen for gen X since their childhood Christmases were defined by the same thing.
As a millennial, if I never have to hear any of those songs again I will be so happy. The music and the encroaching on fall makes me hate Xmas something fierce now.
So I’m imagining a reboot, where adult Macauley Culkin is accidentally left at home by his wife and kids and figures out some robbers are coming. Rather than calling the police like a normal adult, he lays elaborate traps, many involving his current “toys” (power tools). It plays out the next 20 minutes as a Saw-like vignette, then the rest of the movie is a courtroom drama where he is being tried for the murder of the robbers. Does Castle Doctrine cover him? Can he consider it self defense if he never called police even with enough time to set up traps? Will he get treatment for his mental illness as his wife has been begging him to do (plot twist, she didn’t forget him, she left him at home and took the kids to her family’s for safety)?
Also the robbers are still Harry and Marv (just got out of prison) and they were old as shit and very much not a threat as robbers to a grown ass man.
It is bizarre that we made Christmas music as a genre and just decided that the genre needed zero additional songs for the rest of time with the exception of Mariah Carey.
Here in Britain we have a whole slew (or sleigh) of others, but, sticking with the theme, very few of those are from the last 30 years.
I'm surprised at least a couple of them didn't catch on in the US. Maybe they're too whimsical or alien for the average US audience.
Similarly, Feliz Navidad is largely unknown over here. Then again, we don't have the large Hispanic cultural influence that might have allowed it gain a foothold.
Two of the inescapable ones* are from the 70s and a couple of others besides, but yes, 1990 is a significant dropping-off point.
Curiously, one Top 40 chart for Christmas songs streamed in the UK, from December 2021 has Feliz Navidad in there at 35, which is kind of funny because that's above our own band The Darkness. Their '00s Christmas effort tried so hard to re-capture the spirit of the '70s and do well. To some extent it did but the magic wasn't quite there. It probably didn't help that it was based around a riff stolen wholesale from Queen's Brian May (Somebody to Love if memory serves.)
But importantly, that chart does list several others. It's a fairly safe bet that if you see a song, or band (or both) you've not heard of, it's probably one of our home grown ones that hasn't made it big where you are.
Feliz Navidad is the only Christmas song that I don’t utterly despise. Perhaps because none of the places I worked at that played music when I was younger ever had it on the rotation, I can appreciate that it’s super catchy and fun.
All other Christmas music makes a holly jolly boy a sour Scrooge.
Are you saying that industries such as the automotive industry exploit nameplates born in the 60s? I thought the Charger, Challenger, Bronco, Mustang, Blazer and Ford F truck were all original names and designs.
gen x easily the worst music era (excluding hiphop/rnb which really came into it’s own during this generation)
Then: Vibrant creativity and authentic analog sound of the 60s-early 80s, all music was recorded with real instruments
Now: Availability and ease of use provided by computers/free software/internet meaning more music being made than ever before, plus algorithmic sorting providing exposure to only the best of the best the world has to offer.
In between: gen x oof i mean, Nickleback? really? come on
We Gen Xers also grew up during the peak of the popularity of metal.
I’d be the first to say right now metal is amazing but you have to look for it. The days of thrash metal bands filling stadiums are mostly gone except for Metallica.
Christmas music from 90s is mariah carey, 00s consists of justin beiber and 10s consist of Ariana grande. I would take 50s christmas any day over these options
People were saying the same things about the Beatles as they now say about multitudes of young bands. Now they are old people music and thus “real music”.
Music is just becoming lazier. We got from needing 70 instruments and an incredible opera singer to 6 instruments and a talented jazz singer to 4 instruments and a good singer to 0 instruments a bad singer but a lot of vocoder. I didn’t said it was bad, just lazy.
We’ve also gone from people needing to be independently wealthy to even think about creating great music to just needing a cheap computer. Music hasn’t gotten lazier, the barrier to entry has just gotten lower meaning there is a lot more being made across the quality spectrum.
Silent generation was before 1945, boomer from 45 till 64, the pill came out 62 no more baby boom, so tell me about the hits before 45…oh fuck you got me…
Sure, but others like Santana, Michael Jackson, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna,Ted Nugent, Ozzy Osborne,Jimmy Buffet, Karen Carpenter, and Neil Young were Baby Boomers. Lots of great music from Baby Boomers
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