I guess it's about time for my annual rant about the appearance each December of a handful of venerable Christmas songs on Billboard's Hot 100. I used to gripe about Billboard's Holiday Sales and Airplay tallies, complaining that for the most part nothing but musty old standards ever made the holiday charts. During the past several years, however, changes to the formula that determines Billboard's weekly Hot 100 have led to a takeover of that chart by a bunch of 50-year-old holiday records each December. The latest Hot 100 reflects the same tired old pattern. Five of the nation's current Top 10 are perennial holiday tunes with an average age of 52 years. Three of the remaining five are by Kendrick Lamar:
Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of lots of the old standards (a class that excludes anything by Mariah Carey or Wham!, both of whom I could happily do without). But Lord knows there's plenty of other great Christmas music that merits a little airplay now and again. I realize that my advancing age has turned me into a curmudgeon when it comes to popular culture, but music, TV, films, the news media and politics had higher standards 40 years ago and lazy and greedy media executives deserve a good share of the blame.
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