Sep. 8th, 2009

koganbot: (Default)
Have any Christmas songs written after 1960 become standards? By "standard" I don't mean "people listen to Mariah's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' every year," but rather that it's regularly performed and recorded by other performers as well. The only one I can think of is the Greenwich-Barry-Spector "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," which is still pretty old, and I'm not sure it is a standard, just something that David Letterman has Darlene Love reprise every year. (Allmusic lists 31 covers, including Mariah Carey's, Death Cab For Cutie's, Hanson's, U2's, Kidz Bop's, and a freestyle version by Brenda K. Starr. A quick look at Google video indicates that the U2, the Mariah, and the Death Cab are the only non-Darlene versions to get any traction.)

The two interpolated lines of rock 'n' roll that Spector sticks into the Crystals' version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" have become a bit standard, or anyway the Springsteen version that includes the interpolation gets played a lot.

Allmusic actually gives uncertain results for the Carey-Afanasieff "All I Want For Christmas Is You," since the same title has been used by other songwriters too, and there are a bunch of compilations with no songwriter or performer listed by Allmusic so you can't tell if it's Mariah's or some other version or some other "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (though presumably it's not Mariah's version on the zydeco collection, though maybe it's her song). I'm only getting ten for certain, including the likes of Jive Bunny and Kidz Bop, though the number could be far higher. But it won't be within an order of magnitude of, for instance, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," which runs into hundreds upon hundreds.

h/t Tom Ewing

EDIT: I think we've got a winner, but you'll have to check the comments to find out what it is.
koganbot: (Default)
I never did get around to writing about Tom's excellent Decade In Pop piece when it finally emerged, though I was throwing in my two cents whenever he asked for advice in the run-up. The piece's obvious weakness - lack of hip-hop and not enough r&b - wasn't an oversight but was due to Pitchfork's having a separate hip-hop piece. And country's another country, for Tom and for Pitchfork too. But nonetheless, there's an Elephant In The Room.



It's not one of these big elephants that everyone knows about and reacts to but pretends isn't there; it's a big elephant all right, one that everyone knows is there but that they pretty much don't notice and they forget to talk about. Anyway, the elephant is adult contemporary. Also its cousins urban contemporary and smooth jazz.

And markets and formats not existing in isolation, the AC market is crucial to bolster the success of acts that also hit elsewhere. Back in '99 Britney and *NSync and the Backstreet Boys were getting plenty of AC play; about late 2000, early 2001, those groups lost their AC and Top 40 spins, partly, I think, because there was so much attention being paid to teenpop as a genre. And one thing the confessional girls like Michelle and Pink and Vanessa C. and Avril did was to bring AC back to the teens, or vice versa. I think one reason Pink's and Avril's careers have been so resilient is that they've maintained AC support. And rock bands like Daughtry and Hinder have been helped by AC.

ExpandCurrent AC chart )
koganbot: (Default)
Some young people told me about a new hip-hop r&b station in Denver, 95.7 the Party, so I tuned in and they were playing... Taylor Swift! (The dance remix of "You Belong With Me," which is kind of a mess, but it made perfect sense in this context, among Pitbull, New Boyz, The-Dream, Fabolous.)

Profile

koganbot: (Default)
Frank Kogan

March 2025

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
1617 1819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

Expand All Cut TagsCollapse All Cut Tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 05:49 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios