988: Tradition

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Revision as of 20:11, 27 December 2013

Tradition

Title text: An 'American tradition' is anything that happened to a baby boomer twice.

Explanation

This comic uses the source of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to say that the 20 most played Christmas songs in the US between 2000 and 2009 were all released between the 1930s and 1970s. It conspicuously excludes a number of more modern songs that seem ubiquitous, but this is because those songs do not appear on the ASCAP list.

"Popular release" in this context means release to the general public, not the version of the song which is most popular.

The Baby Boomers were born in a period of time after the second World War after the troops came home and, thankful for their lives, went on to produce lots of children.

The data appears to come from an ASCAP survey conducted in 2009.

Transcript

The 20 most-played Christmas songs (2000-2009 radio airplay) by decade of popular release
[A bar chart labeled on the X-axis with the decades "1900s" through "2000s" labeled. Each bar has, as one unit, a labeled song.
"1900s", "1910s", "1920s", "1980s", "1990s", and "2000s" are empty.
"1930s" has "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".
"1940s" has "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Winter Wonderland", "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire", "Let it Snow", "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "I'll be Home for Christmas", and "White Christmas".
"1950s" has "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", "Jingle Bell Rock", "Blue Christmas", "Little Drummer Boy", "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", "Silver Bells", "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas", "Sleigh Ride", and "Frosty the Snowman"
"1960s" has "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"
"1970s" has "Feliz Navidad"]
Every year, American culture embarks on a massive project to carefully recreate the Christmases of Baby Boomers' childhoods.
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Discussion

Redacted the following from the explanation:

It would be interesting to see this research, because the most popular Christmas album of all time was not released until 1994, "Merry Christmas" by Mariah Carey. This album featured what is considered to be the most ubiquitous song around this time of the year which is "All I Want For Christmas Is You" which is also featured prominently in the very popular (and frequently replayed) movie Love Actually from 2003. The song is the only holiday song and ringtone to reach multi-platinum status in the U.S. So, usually the information that Randall presents to us doesn't immediately present itself as egregiously incorrect, but this one just seems to not factor in the popular success of a mid-90s release.

because the list on which Randall based his graph is linked later in the explanation, and Randall doesn't have control over its data (unless he's using Data Over Billboard Charts). Noëlle (talk) 12:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Couldn't this be when all the older Christmas carols and such were popularly released, id est, when radios were becoming common? 107.204.46.198 15:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

It also doesn't include Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer which is also played incessantly. 63.239.65.11 20:26, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


And what about the alt-text? Is it perhaps suggesting that tradition is not as it is made out to be? 173.245.48.63 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Eric Harvey of The Atlantic responded to this comic by pointing out that the period between radio's coming to dominance during the Depression and the onset of rock'n roll was the point where mass media was at its' most *mass* before segmentation took hold. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/why-the-christmas-song-canon-has-a-baby-boomer-bias/250344/ 173.245.52.70 13:44, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
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