Hundreds of holiday hits juggled on All-Christmas Radio
Burl Ives' Holly Jolly Christmas (#1) regained its top spot on the Christmas Ten '06 chart of the most- played Christmas songs among nearly 100 All-Christmas radio stations this year as tracked by Media Monitors, LLC, in its annual Christmas Music Radio Report. For this study, the airplay on 93 All-Christmas radio stations in 60 major metropolitan cities were monitored and compared with previous years during the first ten days of the holiday season beginning on Thanksgiving Day each year.
The Burl Ives classic is back on top after being bumped to the 2nd by Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song (#2) last year. Meanwhile, Bing Crosby's White
Christmas (#3) shows a steady but barely perceptible increase in airplay from fifth place in 2004, fourth place in 2005 and up to 3rd this year. Ives' tune has already been played 3,666 times on those 93 stations in the first ten days of the Holiday season, with Cole's and Crosby's perennials close behind.
Consistency, familiarity and, to coin a term, "singalongability", are the main formulae for All-Christmas radio; forty-five of the top fifty most-played holiday tunes were also among the fifty the year before. And "new" songs on All-Christmas radio? Very, very few. The most "recent" include 1985's Jingle Bell Rock (#11) from Hall & Oates, All I Want For Christmas Is You (#12) by Mariah Carey from 1994, Christmas Shoes (#20) by Newsong from 2002, and Where Are You Christmas?(#40) written by Carey but popularized by Faith Hill in 2000. The rest of the others receiving highest airplay on these stations are safe singalongs of popular artists from the seventies, sixties, and fifties.
Although most tunes hardly budge in their rankings from year to year, both Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad (#4) and The Eagles Please Come Home For Christmas (#6) both made significant upward moves. In '04, Jose's English/Spanish melody was #10, last year it moved up to #8, and this year it jumped into the #4 slot on the Christmas Ten. The Eagles 1978 remake of a 1961 song originally written and performed by R&B crooner Charles Brown ranked #12 two years ago, #9 last year, and up three more to #6 in 2006.
Andy Williams' The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (#5) has the same rank as last year. The Brenda Lee classic, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (#7), was in the number three spot in '04 and '05, but moves down to seventh place in 2006. John Lennon's only holiday song, the ballad Happy Xmas (#8) also drops back to where he was in '04, although last ear he was a lofty number six. Both Merry Christmas Darling from The Carpenters (#9) and It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas by Johnny Mathis (#10) held similar positions on the chart for the past 3 Christmases.
Sacred lyrics on secular radio: Although the majority of songs on All-Christmas stations have non-religious (secular) lyrics, the standard Christmas Carols or "traditional" music are still prevalent. The most-played traditional song is Josh Groban's version of O Holy Night (#16) with over 2,100 plays so far this season; followed by Whitney Houston's Do You Hear What I Hear? (#32), Ray Conniff's version of The Little Drummer Boy (#49) and Vanessa Williams' take on the same song (#52) and The First Noel from Karla Bonoff (#57). These standard carols are also performed on All-Christmas stations by three, four, or more performers each, along with other typical traditional classics by an array of pop and country performers, like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Garth Brooks), Hark The Herald Angels Sing (Amy Grant), and The First Noel (Clay Aiken).
Hall & Oates beats Helms: One interesting "version swap" in popularity has occurred this year: the version of Jingle Bell Rock from Hall & Oates (#11) has jumped in airplay from #21 in '04 to #14 last year to its present slot at number eleven this year. However, for the first time in 2006 that version is receiving more airplay than the original Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms (#14), which drops dramatically from #4 two years ago down to #12 last year down further to fourteenth in 2006.
Origins of holiday music stations: Every year, hundreds of radio stations flip formats to All-Christmas every year on or around Thanksgiving Day, a recent trend dating from December of 2001, the first Christmas following the Sept. 11 attacks. Considered a "stunt" five years ago to convey a feeling of comfort and nostalgia, only a few dozen stations that year made the move, but in subsequent years many more have hopped onto the bandwagon as early as Thanksgiving Day. This year, over 350 stations in the United States have already jettisoned their year-long formats (most coming from Adult Contemporary) to go All-Christmas for the month.
Station library sizes vary widely: This year, Media Monitors counted over 600 individual songs being played in the collective libraries of the All-Christmas radio stations. On average, these stations have about 300 songs on their holiday playlists, some stations repeating less than 200 of the best-testing songs while others play well many more by digging deeper into their Christmas music catalogs and airing well over 500 different individual Christmas songs.
Most Prolific Xmas'06 Tune: There are 55 versions of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", more than any other Holiday song, airing on these All-Christmas stations. The most-played versions of that song are by, in descending order, Gloria Estefan, James Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Amy Grant, The Carpenters, and 50 more artists. Other songs with the most versions by various artists on All-Christmas radio this year include "Winter Wonderland", "The Christmas Song", "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow", "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", "Silent Night" and "White Christmas".
Most "Christmas-Friendly" performers: Johnny Mathis (45 songs), Amy Grant (28 songs) and Harry Connick, Jr. (20 songs) have the most number of different Holiday songs already being played in 2006 on All-Christmas radio, followed by many others including Sinatra, Crosby, Andy Williams, Vanessa Williams plus instrumentalists Kenny G and Mannheim Steamroller.
