YOU may remember some months ago I wrote a list of my least favourite songs of all time.
I wandered into Christmas song territory by including Paul McCartney’s woeful ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ on my list of shame.
Had there been space I could have included just about every Christmas song ever written.
Nine out of 10 Christmas songs are total trash and the remaining 10% that are half-decent become tedious because they’re played to death from the first millisecond of November 1.
Thankfully we don’t have music in the Examiner newsroom – so varied and divergent are our tastes there’d be a fight within minutes over what gets played.
Besides it’d be highly insensitive to have jaunty music playing in the background when you’re calling someone about something grave.
So I really do sympathise for the poor employees of companies that insist on playing festive tunes non-stop during the months leading up to Christmas – shop workers, for example.
About a decade ago, Steph worked on the tills at Tesco and from about November 1 the same 15 Christmas songs would play on repeat.
Steph and I have pretty similar music tastes, we like punk, metal and indie-rock as much as we despise schmaltz – and Christmas music is almost invariably schmaltzy.
To be stuck at a checkout and forced to listen to Christmas cheese on repeat for eight hours each day must have been torture.
One shopper remarked: “It must be lovely to work here and listen to all those Christmas songs.”
Steph probably visualised leaping over the counter and asphyxiating the shopper with a Tesco Bag For Life. However she probably just shrugged, went home and washed her ears out with a bit of blistering hardcore punk.
So if for some inexplicable reason you’re out shopping and enjoy hearing Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ for the 1,739,547th time don’t mention it to the person who serves you or you may end up spending Christmas Day six feet below.
