Here comes the Christmas music. Yes, already.
I hate it when people try to push us out of summer. Halloween candies have been on sale at my Shopper’s Drug Mart for weeks already. Starbucks brought back pumpkin spice latte two weeks early this year. Meanwhile, my Aunt Sylvia is calling for an early, cold, and snowy winter based on her observations of the state of falling acorns in her backyard. “They’re falling sooner this year. Bad winter’s on the way.”
The recorded music industry isn’t helping, either.
On Thursday, PlayMPE, one of the digital music delivery services used to get music to radio stations, posted a download link for Brenda Lee’s 1958 hit, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Yesterday, they sent “Christmas Without You” a (new?) seasonal song by Tori Hathaway. There’s nothing on DMDS (the other music distribution service, but it’s just a matter of time. Soon Christmas songs will start dropping like the acorn’s in Aunt Sylvia’s backyard.
It’s only a matter of time before radio stations start flipping to an all-Christmas format again. Doing so is a guaranteed ratings-getting because a non-zero number of people love to start with the Christmas music months in advance. The most common time for the flip used to be in mid-November, but that has creeped back into October and even September in some markets. In fact, there was once an all-Christmas-all-the-time-24/365 station in Albany, New York, but they’ve since flipped to classic rock.
I mean, I like Christmas as much as the next person, but let’s take a breath, shall week? I want to put off hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” as long as possible. But I fear it’s now only a matter of hours before that annual assault begins.
Still better than even one day of summer…