Piped Christmas music in the supermarkets

chillidoggy

RocknRollDave said:

Whilst we're on the subject of supermarket music, hands down the best in my opinion is Co-op. No idea who does their music, but it's not just your usual dross.

My son used to work for the Co-op, he always said that was the best thing about working there.

Phil_aka_Pip

chillidoggy said:

RocknRollDave said:

Whilst we're on the subject of supermarket music, hands down the best in my opinion is Co-op. No idea who does their music, but it's not just your usual dross.

My son used to work for the Co-op, he always said that was the best thing about working there.

They just pipe Radio 2 in the Debenham Coop. Maybe a local management decision

ThePrettyDamned

Bucket;435711" said:

richardhomer said:

Fairy Tale of New York....









Also NSFW.

From the makers of the London Underground song.

I've seen them live, they're brilliant.

Phil_aka_Pip

just watched some of these ... LOL to the power of LOL !

Emp_Fab

What I don't get is why Christmas music appears to be a fixed setlist welded shut and chained to the 1980's.  Are we still going to be forced to listen to bloody Slade and that horrendous diarrhoea that is Chris DeBurgh in the year 2060 ?  I can just see it now, our descendants going about their business in shopping malls, with their hover-trolleys and 3D hologramatic shop assistants and Chris De-fucking-Burgh slithering its way out of the speakers.

Hasn't anyone made any good Christmas songs in the past thirty years or are all the shops and media outlets just too scared to break away from what they did last year, and the year before etc. ?

Phil_aka_Pip

Emp_Fab said:

Hasn't anyone made any good Christmas songs in the past thirty years or are all the shops and media outlets just too scared to break away from what they did last year, and the year before etc. ?

That's how christmas carols became "traditional"

RocknRollDave

Problem is the more notable Christmas songs of recent-ish years have either been a bit inappropriate for retail use (Darkness, Bo Selector, Band Aid song about Ebola) or inferior reworkings of existing songs (Steps doing Merry Xmas Everybody, anyone? Samantha Mumba doing All I Want For Christmas?) or just not very popular - Coldplay's festive dirge, for example. I do like to use KT Tunstall's Christmas ones as they are all good versions that work well and offer something different without being inferior.

Phil_aka_Pip

Try this then

HippoPete

On the upside, Nick Lowe's Quality Street is a fantastic Christmas album which I thoroughly recommend. 

And on the other hand, there should be a special place in hell reserved for the producers of perfume adverts at this time of year with their ultra slow breathy vocal reworkings. Bah, humbug indeed.

Nunogilberto

Worse still are the covers of popular xmas songs you hear in places like B&Q and Poundstretcher...

imalone

Nunogilberto said:

Worse still are the covers of popular xmas songs you hear in places like B&Q and Poundstretcher...

There's a genre of covers that seem to have been done to remove any personality from the song and make it more acceptable for advertising. There was a (possibly non-Christmas) Stones one a while back that really annoyed me.

Plenty of alternatives that could be used instead of playing the usual suspects on loop for a month (and that's the other thing, I like Christmas, but this festive season stuff is not on, I don't need Sainsbury's putting up tinsel in November). Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler had a stab at some interesting ones a couple of years ago:

Also includes "Zombie Christmas". "Home for the Holidays" is about as conventionally Christmas as that album gets. http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Christmas-Emmy-The-Great/dp/B005X8V530

Then there's all the classical Christmas music that could be used, probably enough of that to keep you going for days without repeating. Bach cantatas and stuff (anyone remember Radio 3's "Bach Christmas" when they decided to spend a month working through the entire canon?).

underdog

chillidoggy;435673" said:

richardhomer said:

Fairy Tale of New York....



 

NSFW

That was probably the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life

p90fool

richardhomer said:

Fairy Tale of New York....

This is my absolute least favourite of all, possibly because it's alleged to be slightly "cooler" than some of the others.
A fucking Pogue and that weird overrated Mc-something bloody woman, cunts the the pair of them.

I'm not really a Scrooge, I just work for Tesco two days a week and heard it 9 times on Tuesday and 8 on Wednesday. Some of the full-time staff were climbing the bloody walls already and it was only the 3rd of December.

ICBM

Anything has to be better than bloody Cliff and his mistletoe and wine. Unless it means strangle him with the first and drown him in the second.

Slade is the best though. If you disagree you're wrong .

But the Noel Gallagher cover of it from a few years back is one of the worst. It's like Christmas with a relative you know well and can't stand.

Most of the rest I can take, as long as it's restricted to just three weeks or so.

EricTheWeary

An opportunity here to mention one of the most annoying records of all time ( by someone I quite like) - 2000 miles by the Pretenders.

Phil_aka_Pip

imalone said:

anyone remember Radio 3's "Bach Christmas" when they decided to spend a month working through the entire canon?

one of the few times when R3 broadcasts anything listenable outside of The Early Music Show

LastMantra

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Try this then

The four stages of a man's life...

1) You believe in Santa Claus 

2) You don't believe in Santa Claus

3) You need to be Santa Claus

4) You start to look like Santa Claus

RocknRollDave

EricTheWeary said:

An opportunity here to mention one of the most annoying records of all time ( by someone I quite like) - 2000 miles by the Pretenders.

Whaaaaat?!

holnrew

I used to work in Safeway/Morrisons and they played the Christmas music, but to be honest they played the same shit over and over the rest of the year so it made a nice change.

ICBM

RocknRollDave said:

EricTheWeary said:

An opportunity here to mention one of the most annoying records of all time ( by someone I quite like) - 2000 miles by the Pretenders.

Whaaaaat?!

Must admit I'm not a fan of that song either, and I like the Pretenders a lot. It's one of those songs which sounds like it was a real struggle to fit the lyrics to the rhythm, and the lyrics weren't good enough for it to have been worth the effort either...