• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Why hasn't any artist been able to match Mariah's "All I Want For Christmas Is You"?

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Mushroomer25

Member
FyreWulff said:
tradition.png
Click to expand...

This whole image perfectly nails the wierd truth behind Xmas nostalgia. It's a perpetual cycle - we seek out to have the same experiences we had from our youth during the XMas season. But that childhood was shaped by our parents, who in turn got those traditions from their parents. So we've clung to these TV specials, songs, and movies from the earliest days of the medium. Because they've got a permanent place in pop culture, and rarely become usurped by new material. It takes something really special to join a crowded list of traditions, and I honestly think 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' - is the only song from the past 20 years great enough to establish a foothold.

I'd really love it if more artists gave it their all in one year, and tried to create a wholly new generation of Christmas music. Do it in the name of overturning cultural stagnation.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Mushroomer25 said:
This whole image perfectly nails the wierd truth behind Xmas nostalgia. It's a perpetual cycle - we seek out to have the same experiences we had from our youth during the XMas season. But that childhood was shaped by our parents, who in turn got those traditions from their parents. So we've clung to these TV specials, songs, and movies from the earliest days of the medium. Because they've got a permanent place in pop culture, and rarely become usurped by new material. It takes something really special to join a crowded list of traditions, and I honestly think 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' - is the only song from the past 20 years great enough to establish a foothold.

I'd really love it if more artists gave it their all in one year, and tried to create a wholly new generation of Christmas music. Do it in the name of overturning cultural stagnation.
Click to expand...

Fun fact: the time passed between Carey's song and now is almost the same amount of time that's passed between Mariah recording it and Feliz Navidad's release
 
R

ryutaro's mama

Member
'All I want For Christmas Is You' is my favorite Christmas song and it isn't close.

'Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays' gets an honorable mention. That song was catchy as hell.
 
D

dejay

Banned
Mushroomer25 said:
This whole image perfectly nails the wierd truth behind Xmas nostalgia. It's a perpetual cycle - we seek out to have the same experiences we had from our youth during the XMas season. But that childhood was shaped by our parents, who in turn got those traditions from their parents. So we've clung to these TV specials, songs, and movies from the earliest days of the medium. Because they've got a permanent place in pop culture, and rarely become usurped by new material. It takes something really special to join a crowded list of traditions, and I honestly think 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' - is the only song from the past 20 years great enough to establish a foothold.
Click to expand...

Christmas is about trying to cling to something "magical" and trying to pass that onto our children. That's the real Christmas gift. I'm gen x, so a few 80s songs do it for me (Last Christmas for sure) on top of the "traditional" stuff, but I'm not sure about what millennials would go to.
 
C

CloudWolf

Member
Christmas songs in general are pretty awful and All I Want for Christmas Is You is actually not awful. I think that aside from the Mariah song, the only Christmas songs I like are Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End), Fairytale of New York (does that one actually count as a Christmas song?) and the occassional movie soundtrack (mostly Muppets Christmas Carol).

obin_gam said:
The Muppets "Scrooge" -song is better


EDIT: one could argue It Feels Like Christmas is a tiny bit better still
Click to expand...

I like you.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Needs a couple of Phil Spector Christmas songs and this thread would be almost the perfect Christmas playlist
 
D

DeadTrees

Member
A decent overview of this song showed up last year on Slate (remember when they mattered?):
Rock ’n’ roll songs (and the subsequent pop songs influenced by the genre) may only contain three or four chords, each chord usually being just a major or a minor—the two chord “flavors” analogous to chocolate and vanilla. In contrast, a tune from the Songbook might use a Baskin-Robbins shop full of chords and chord flavors—7ths and 9ths, half and fully diminished, various inversions, and more. The melodies that work over such chords tend to include a lot of chromatic notes (the black notes on the piano when playing in the key of C major).

These relatively exotic harmonies—particularly the diminished chords—are often used by more modern songwriters to get a “classic” sound. For instance, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” includes some notes in its choral parts that I think are intended to recall the harmonic vocabulary of those 1940s Christmas standards.
Click to expand...

I count at least 13 distinct chords at work in “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” resulting in a sumptuously chromatic melody. The song also includes what I consider the most Christmassy chord of all—a minor subdominant, or “iv,” chord with an added 6, under the words “underneath the Christmas tree,” among other places. (You might also analyze it as a half-diminished “ii” 7th chord, but either interpretation seems accurate.)

The same chord is found, in a different key and inversion, in Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”—on the line “children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow,” specifically under the word listen, among other spots. In both songs the chord comes immediately after a major subdominant chord, giving the effect of a “bright” major subdominant that you might say “sighs” or “melts” into a “dark” minor subdominant spiked with a “spicy” extra tone (the added 6), before the songs settle back into their tonic, or “home,” chords.

In plain English, it’s a chord sequence that sounds “cozy.” Carey’s song includes lots of other major-to-minor or diminished sequences that make a guy feel like he’s snuggled by the fire, just back from the war, with a mulled cider in one hand and his other arm around Rosie the Riveter, ready to start a baby boom on Christmas Eve 1945.

I should say I’m talking here only about the song’s harmonic content. The way those harmonies are articulated with rhythms, instrumentation, and phrasing is drawn straight from soul and R&B music that wouldn’t be popularized until a decade or two after my little postwar scenario. In fact, that’s another reason why “All I Want for Christmas Is You” makes us so happy—it reminds us of the great ’60s and ’70s Motown covers of prewar Christmas classics, such as the Jackson 5’s bopping version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” or Stevie Wonder’s joyful reading of “The Christmas Song.” Carey’s song gives us a double shot of mid-20th-century nostalgia.
Click to expand...
 
M

Meowster

Member
It's a great song and it very likely will be the last original Christmas classic.

At least until the baby boomers die off. Go Mimi.
 
M

MC Safety

Member
The best Christmas album ever produced by humans is Mojo Nixon's "Horny Holidays."

FALSE.

Mojo Nixon is superhuman and beyond your comprehension. He made his Christmas album for you, the little people, knowing you were not ready for it.
 
P

PeskyToaster

Member
Mariah Carey has to grovel for Game of War cash while Taylor Swift is bossing around Apple atop her throne built on sales of Last Christmas.
 
P

PillarEN

Member
I love this song.
"All I Want for Christmas is You" and "Last Christmas" are my holiday jams. I can listen to these on constant repeat. Throw in some Xmas John Lennon and Paul McCartney tunes too.
 
B

Brhoom

Banned
PeskyToaster said:
Mariah Carey has to grovel for Game of War cash while Taylor Swift is bossing around Apple atop her throne built on sales of Last Christmas.
Click to expand...
Mariah's net wroth: 500+ million
Taylor's net wroth: 200 million
You tried it tho! Now go back and enjoy some good old live singing by Taylor and learn how can you sing in 15 diffrent key on one song.
 
T

Touchdown

Banned
PeskyToaster said:
Mariah Carey has to grovel for Game of War cash while Taylor Swift is bossing around Apple atop her throne built on sales of Last Christmas.
Click to expand...

I try not to respond to troll posts but this is too easy and I'm always willing to educate the Swifties time and again being that they are usually pretty young and can get a little petty.

tumblr_inline_nvvas94SkN1qey2bt_540.png


tumblr_inline_nvvauuqf9Q1qey2bt_540.png


Now I suggest you go along your way and troll some others with your misplaced anger or else contribute to this thread by staying on topic please so I won't have to read your ass for dust.

tumblr_inline_nvkld8fQnH1rtavls_540.gif
 
L

Leona Lewis

Banned
The street is almond said:
Mariah's net wroth: 500+ million
Taylor's net wroth: 200 million
You tried it tho! Now go back and enjoy some good old live singing by Taylor and learn how can you sing in 15 diffrent key on one song.
Click to expand...

Touchdown said:
I try not to respond to troll posts but this is too easy and I'm always willing to educate the Swifties time and again being that they are usually pretty young and can get a little petty.

tumblr_inline_nvvas94SkN1qey2bt_540.png


tumblr_inline_nvvauuqf9Q1qey2bt_540.png


Now I suggest you go along your way and troll some others with your misplaced anger or else contribute to this thread by staying on topic please so I won't have to read your ass for dust.

tumblr_inline_nvkld8fQnH1rtavls_540.gif
Click to expand...
mariah-carey-2013.gif


let them know
 
B

Buddha Beam

Banned
I hate this song and every year I inevitably contemplate sticking something sharp deep in my ear once I've heard it for about the 200th time.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was successful enough that Disney reportedly "picked up the phone and wants more"
2 3
140
8K
AJUMP23 replied
DF Weekly: What does the Switch 2 motherboard leak say about system performance?
Opinion Analysis 2 3 4 5
221
10K
onnextflix5 replied
Nicolas Doucet (Team Asobi): [All ages] is something that PlayStation HAS been, and I think SHOULD be, and this is why we are pushing into the space
Opinion Game Dev Platform 2
58
4K
nial replied
Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree" is the rightfull successor to Mariah's "All I want for Christmas"...
35
1K
belmarduk replied
What actually happened to Warren Ellis?
14
2K
CGNoire replied
Top Bottom