How many MORE Christmas songs?
As temperatures drop and the all too familiar voice of Mariah Carey blares over the speakers, Christmas has managed to sneak up on us once again.
Back in 2019 we conducted some research into the Blokur database to try and see how many Christmas songs we could find. If you read the entry, then you’ll know that the results wildly exceeded our expectations. But what if we were to tell you that there was more?
Last time around, we found that the Blokur platform held 9,274 songs with the word “Christmas” in the title. This year, to our surprise, we found that the number is closer to 49,000.
Now depending on your disposition towards Christmas music, the idea of almost 50k Christmas songs may either bring you cheer and jolly tidings, or have you hissing in humbugs. Regardless, the 5x expansion reflects the impressive growth of the Blokur database, which has added 30 million musical works over the last twelve months.
And that’s not all.
In 2019 we also found that when it came to song titles, the topic of “Christmas” ranked 18 out of the top 20 most popular words. This year, it actually moved up to 14! It seems that we’ve missed the holiday season during the pandemic more than we’d like to admit. Though it’s still no match for top contending words such as “Love” which found a rapid 3x increase in song title use.
We’ve already agreed that Christmas as a genre is strong enough to stand on its own two legs, even more so now with the new data. But it’s not as if these songs just popped out of the snow — so who’s writing all of them? One songwriter taking advantage of the seasonal theme is Robert D. Sands Jr, who we found was the №1 songwriter for songs with “Christmas”, “Santa Claus” or “Happy Holidays” in the title with well over 100 contributions to the Christmas canon.
Now last time we ended with a Christmas song — so in the spirit of tradition we’ll end with another one. This time we’ve chosen a song by Icelandic superstar Björk which tells the mystifying story of Jólakötturinn, the fluffy feline counterpart to Krampus, who eats naughty children at Christmas time. Though, you might want to keep this one off your carolling list.
