McCartney Times

Did you know the songs of the festive season are really about being lonely, death and madness?

In all honesty, Christmas music is dark as hell. For a start, there are the retail workers who are unrelentingly subjected to these songs – their minds slowly eroded to the tune of “The Most Wonderful Time Of Year”, the rum-pump-a-pumping of “Stop The Cavalry” like daggers to the heart. It’s easy to imagine the experience being akin to getting stuck on the “It’s A Small World” ride at Disneyland for somewhere close to 500 hours, but in a retail park somewhere off the A3. A shop-floor hell in a building atop a slab of wasteland concrete.

Also, on top of that, there’s also the content of the songs themselves, which on a few occasions has been anything but festive – a world where depressing narratives lay beneath the guise of festive cheer. So call us scrooges, call us what you will: here are the Christmas no-no’s that should be erased from the playlist or at the least reconsidered over some eggnog before being unleashed unto the masses, coating Yuletide with it’s true colours of dismal and blue depression. Happy holidays!!!

There’s a very distinct quality to the British that mostly involves saying something is fine when it’s absolutely not. The most common example of this is everyday greeting, when the response to “how are you” is often “fine, thanks (and also I’m mentally expiring)”. Another is the Paul McCartney song “Wonderful Christmas Time”. On paper the song’s lyrics read like an idealised version of the festive season. In reality however it can be the ironic backdrop to countless family arguments, looping on and on in the background as a strange form of torture – clenched smiles and barely-touching hugs rendered immortally in one demented piece of music. Ryan

Source: Sorry Guys, We’re About to Ruin Your Christmas – Noisey