I am actually beginning to hate Final Christmas.

I used to be by no means an enormous George Michael fan, however I at all times had an excessive amount of
respect for his expertise and have loved a few of his songs. That mentioned, I
suppose we will agree that Final Christmas was a decidedly minor entry into
the artist’s catalog, which wasn’t a problem till the Christmas muzak algorithm determined to play it very fifteen minutes. 

From Wikipedia: 

In December 2023, “Final Christmas” grew to become Christmas primary. It additionally grew to become the third-best promoting UK single, with 5.34 million gross sales, together with streams. As of December 2023, “Final Christmas” had offered over 1.93 million bodily copies and downloads, making it the eighth-bestselling single ever within the UK. It was licensed six-times platinum in December 2023. In 2024, it grew to become the primary track to be Christmas primary for 2 consecutive years. That 12 months, PRS for Music estimated that “Final Christmas” generates £300,000 of royalties per 12 months. 

(Trivia buffs may keep in mind that the perpetual royalties from a Christmas hit had been a key plot level in each the e book and the film A couple of Boy.)

The definitive put up on the persistence of Christmas songs that ought to have lengthy since worn out their welcome wasn’t a put up in any respect; it was this cartoon from XKCD.

 Whereas Randall’s level is legitimate, it does miss a few arguably extra necessary components.

For many years, you possibly can see in style media making an attempt to enchantment to some idealized viewer born circa 1952 as a result of, like the person mentioned in regards to the banks, that was the place the cash was. The market was enormous and everyone needed a bit. Studios, file corporations and publishers pumped out tons upon tons of content material whereas going again to the earlier decade to search out extra materials to fill the pipeline (significantly for tv). It helped that the 40s was golden age for Christmas requirements, written largely by Jewish songwriters like Irving Berlin. 

By the top of the mid-sixties, media corporations had an unlimited catalog of Christmas songs, a few of them superb, with an enormous quantity of title recognition, which led to the second issue: content material accumulates, and between the longing for familiarity across the holidays and the eleven month breaks, the shelf lifetime of of this style was very lengthy certainly.  

We definitely cannot blame boomer nostalgia for Final Christmas, however provided that the age of that track immediately matches the age of Frosty and Holly Jolly in 2000, we will probably blame outdated folks basically.