Millenials and the Jolly Tunes of Holiday Season

Millennials are known to be the generation that hypes almost everything and then be the buzz killer, but they are also the cheesiest generation that we have ever come across as per the new study done by Nielsen. It has been discovered in the survey that 36 percent of our Xmas music lovers are people aged between 18 years to 34 years. This is a shocking discovery for Americans who have seen the rise of streaming era and have witnessed the retail era going down. By comparing the “boomers and beyond” classification of 55 years plus audience there were only 25 percent of holiday music fans. These stats are shocking specifically when only two artists’, later than 1970, holiday music was played on the radio out of the top 10 Christmas songs which were Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you” and Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo.”. Talking about Mariah’s “All I want for Christmas is you” it was produced in 1994, but still today it is alive in our hearts and it makes its place straight to the top of the charts around this season. Superstars like Ariana Grande and Fifth Harmony also came up with their versions of Mariah’s song to give it a millennial touch, not only this Mariah herself recorded this song with Justin Bieber and presented it to the younger audience.

Whether it’s Christmas or not, you must have noticed the holiday music being played in the grocery stores around you usual than in previous years, it is because the trend is changing drastically and radio stations are cashing on this trend by playing Christmas music way earlier. If we look into the stats of streaming services such as Spotify, the heaviest airplay is for classic Christmas songs and music that is produced after 2010 but looking into the number of sales it is observed that people are more interested in buying new music releases but they chose to listen to old holiday music at home and work to cherish the memories attached to those Xmas songs. 

Everyone is into thinking that what has gone into the millennial mind that they are off to the more ironic and classiest holiday season music. One of the main reasons behind this is their memories attached to the music which simply is called nostalgia. Not only in music, but this change is also visible in the television or fashion industry where the millennial taste is changing to the old classy types. It will not be wrong to say that millennials are kind of obsessed with older assets. Other reasons could be the political scandals being shown on the media all the time that makes everyone’s lives so tensed and boring and hence people wanted to enjoy their lives, maybe this Is the reason the younger generation is moving towards the old. Millennials are the kind of generation that doesn’t want serious content as their main motto is to enjoy their life. So, why will anyone prefer to watch a drama that seems like a tragedy instead they can go back to 1950 and listen to Ella Fitzgerald music or Maria’s music in 1994. 

I feel that there is a strange type of comfort in holiday music. It seems that the brands of America offer the best escape route for the heart and the brain via their Christmas and holiday music. In Malcolm Harris book, “Kids These Days: Human Capital and The Making of Millennial”, he stated that Millennial are facing some sort of existential anxiety he further added:

“Either we continue the trends we’ve been given and enact the bad future, or we refuse it and cut the knot of trend lines that defines our collectivity.”

Christmas music has advanced completely and has turned into more sincerity and genuineness. If you listen to the Christmas music “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” or “Blue Christmas” you will feel that everything is broken or damaged. 

The song testing one’s love for a holiday is “Baby It’s Cold Outside” but it is taken as an example of a poor understanding of consent by men. We are living in the area of #Me-too and what we can do about the song in which female singer is saying “The Answer Is No” and “Say, What Is in This Drink?” as she is linking this to her duet partner. 

Millennials are in love with old Christmas music because they are introduced or exposed to Christmas music every year, so they have tons of memories attached to do songs. Moreover, we are touched by Christmas music in a certain way that no other music can do. Even if we don’t like a Xmas song after hearing it for the first time, we certainly fall in love with that song after hearing it again and again throughout our whole life. Every type of music hit certain pleasure centers of the brain, but only holiday music can hit that spot where memories are kept safely. Well, this could be one more reason for millennial falling in love with old holiday music. Since Millennials are now the genre’s biggest lovers, the appetite for holiday music has gotten bigger. So, if you think that Christmas music is not cool, you need to keep it to yourself because you are going to make Millennials angry (take this as friendly advice). 

Take it or leave it, but there is no escaping. Christmas music is everywhere around you. It follows you from your favorite grocery store to a Coffee shop, it goes all the way to the entire radio station. As we are already halfway through November and this means that we are officially into the season of Christmas, and it is the right time to be on top of the charts again. There are different kinds of Christmas classic music like, old classics, the new classics, and the revamp of the old classics and, then there is a personal favorite by George Michael which is a sweet tale of holiday romance. If we go into the deeper calculation, there are about 500 radio stations only in the United States that broadcasts Christmas music for up to 24 hours. This shows that by December 25^th, approximately 360,000 hours of holiday music will be played across the United States only. To go deeper into the calculation, let us tell you that there are 8760 hours in a year and via 500 radio stations more than the value of 41 years of Christmas music is played every year for 30 days. 

Talking about the love for old Xmas songs, here we are quoting a line from Bob Seger's song that he sang in 1979, “Today’s Music Ain’t Got the Same Soul, I Like That Old-Time Rock ‘N’ Roll.” We can see that this line is true to date because we have seen that Millennials are loving the old-time Christmas music more than the new ones. With all the love for old Christmas music by Millennial, there is also a chunk of people who are not into old music and they are a fan of new holiday songs. But this fact cannot oversee that no matter what Millennials are hungrier for old Christmas Classics rather than new hip-hop music and it is also proved that since old classics take them to their childhood or make their memories alive, they are more attached to those old classics and they want to remain attached to them.