Associated with Christmas

To this day and most likely for years beyond, it baffles me how Stay Another Day by East 17 gets carted around on Christmas music playlists. There’s literally nothing Christmassy about it. Take some of the other classics, for example…

• I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard: makes notable references to Christmas and related Yuletide themes throughout.
• Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade: literally contains a guy screaming “IT’S CHRISTMAS” from the back of his throat.
• Step Into Christmas by Elton John: begins with the line “Welcome to my Christmas song.” Therefore, is Christmas song.
• Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses: the story of a woman spending her entire year looking for a certain man, only to miraculously bump into him at Christmas. Ba-da-ba ba-ba-ba bawm *saxophone*.
• Mistletoe & Wine by Cliff Richard: is a song by Cliff Richard. Of course it’s a Christmas song.

There are several others that have tenuous links – like Fairytale Of New York and Stop The Cavalry – that generally focus of other themes (namely spousal discord and anti-war sentiments) with only occasional references to Christmas. But we, as a species, let them off for that.

However, my issue with the aforementioned East 17 track and it’s inexplicable inclusion on Christmas compilations and supermarket tannoys in December stems from the fact that it contains nothing related to the season. Well, maybe some church bells towards the end, but they have church at Easter too. And August.

Here’s the deal. Back in 1994, this boyband (I assume) recorded several tracks for an album. So far so beige. One of those tracks, titled Stay Another Day, lamented the loss of a hypothetical partner. Essentially, it’s a dreary break-up song. During the recording, someone (I assume) thought about putting some echoing bells over the final chorus for whatever unfathomable reason, because, you know, why the fuck not?

When it came to selecting songs from the album to promote as singles, someone in the marketing and promotion department (I assume) decided to have a song by East 17 contend for the Christmas Number One of that year, because The X Factor didn’t exist yet. Deciding upon which song to promote at this time, the marketing people listened to Stay Another Day and (I assume) went, “ooh, it’s got bells at the end, it sounds wintery, that’d be good” and someone else (I assume) agreed.

Then came the music video. “Let’s put them all in big fluffy parkas and we can have some fake snow in the background,” said they. “We can even add the snow on screen using this advanced computer graphics technology. It’s 1994, this is the future, this is advanced as digital film editing is going to get and it certainly won’t look shit in twenty years time. But hey, even if it does, it won’t get seen that far in the future anyway.”

The song became a hit that December and claimed the Number One spot after the previous year’s tyranny of Mr Blobby. “Hurrah,” cried the marketing team, as they sipped their golden martinis while swimming in the private pools filled with banknotes and cocaine (I assume). Their task was complete.

Some years later, however, it was evident that this piece of dreary throwaway pop music had become synonymous with Christmas, for some reason. Now, through a combination of church bells, music video snow and… well… no, there isn’t a third thing, that’s it. That’s why this song is associated with Christmas now. It seriously does not make sense. Why can nobody else see this?

Still, I suppose it’s nice for those guys and the songwriters behind it to be able to rely on an annual pay check. I wonder if Cliff Richard sees as much in royalties too.

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2016 has been a decent year of musical discoveries, but it’s always nice to rest on something familiar too. This sort of manages to bring both of those elements together and does so in a calm an sedate manner. Laura Marling is a long time favourite of mine, despite only really making music for less than a decade. It’s bizarre to think that someone of a similar age can be on the edge releasing album number six, while I zombie-walk through days without leaving much of an impression upon the world, but hey, such is life.

Moving into a more smooth and jazzy sound, that familiar voice making new music that my brain instantly latches onto is a wonder and a joy. If I have to explain more about it, it’ll pretty much just be waffling from here on, so I’d rather stop now and leave the 50th song selection of the year here. Then we can get on with the annual review. Oh boy.

Laura Marling – Soothing