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indigozealWhen I first heard Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time," I didn't think it was for real. I was in an environment that constantly piped Christmas music in from the same station during the holiday season, and the contrast between its aggressive inanity and everything else (and its brand of routine inanity) was surreal. I thought it was a joke song; I had no idea that one of the Beatles was behind it and that it was meant to be taken more or less straight.
After 17,000 rotations, though, Stockholm set in, and I turned around to liking the thing, as one would become attached to a big, overly friendly, somewhat dim dog. I actually went to download it once but got mad when I found Amazon blew my mp3 credit on what was supposed to be a free song and then didn't pop for it.
But! The point of all this is that, while it's been slotted a #1 seed in the Worst Christmas Song tournament over at the sorta-tabloidy-and-occasionally-problematic Jezebel, I agree wholeheartedly with the dead-on accurate descriptions of the thing:
"It sounds like how it feels to be overcaffeinated and light headed in the middle of a Macy's Black Friday sale after being awake for 24 hours. It's manic, stupid, and overstimulating while simultaneously leaving the listener wondering if anything at all has meaning. If Ringo Starr ever made a Christmas song, we are all doomed."
"...[R]arely does a work of art successfully encapsulate the feeling of going insane, much less in song. And it's even more of an achievement for a musical work to capture the sound of Paul McCartney going insane."
[when up against "Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer"] "One's about hillbillies and drunk pedestrians being killed by Santa...and the other's about Paul McCartney discovering synthesizers."
After 17,000 rotations, though, Stockholm set in, and I turned around to liking the thing, as one would become attached to a big, overly friendly, somewhat dim dog. I actually went to download it once but got mad when I found Amazon blew my mp3 credit on what was supposed to be a free song and then didn't pop for it.
But! The point of all this is that, while it's been slotted a #1 seed in the Worst Christmas Song tournament over at the sorta-tabloidy-and-occasionally-problematic Jezebel, I agree wholeheartedly with the dead-on accurate descriptions of the thing:
"It sounds like how it feels to be overcaffeinated and light headed in the middle of a Macy's Black Friday sale after being awake for 24 hours. It's manic, stupid, and overstimulating while simultaneously leaving the listener wondering if anything at all has meaning. If Ringo Starr ever made a Christmas song, we are all doomed."
"...[R]arely does a work of art successfully encapsulate the feeling of going insane, much less in song. And it's even more of an achievement for a musical work to capture the sound of Paul McCartney going insane."
[when up against "Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer"] "One's about hillbillies and drunk pedestrians being killed by Santa...and the other's about Paul McCartney discovering synthesizers."
