"Does your Granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?"

[miss_squiddy]

Right. So there are 168 hours in a week. If you minus the hours spent at work (38) and the time spent sleeping (56), that leaves 74 hours of 'free' time which could feasibly be filled with audio-visual stimulation to one degree or another.

I estimate that Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody must be played on average once every 2 hours throughout November and once an hour throughout December.^[1]

Thats... (74*4=148)+(74*4*2=296) ...444 plays per year.

Given that Merry Christmas Everybody was released in 1973 and that I wasn't born until 1978, I estimate that I have heard that blinking song 11,988 times in my life.^[2]


No wonder I'm sick of it.

^[1] ...Within range of me. And I'm counting hearing any part of the song as a 'play'. So that includes annoying repetitive radio jingles, adverts for compilation CDs, 100 Greatest Christmassy Moments programmes and shopping trips where every single shop is playing dodgy Christmas tunes. So no, I wouldn't expect to hear Noddy Holder crowing 'Iiiiit's Chriiiistmas!' on the hour every hour like some demented cuckoo clock, but I reckon all the airplay he takes up at the end of the month must even things up...
^[2] Yeah, I know my working out is shoddy. Dammit Jim - I'm a historian, not a mathematician!

Comments

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

Be thankful it's not played at work. I have mental scars from working at Gateway deli counter and having it piped on a loop whilst I served sliced luncheoun tongue.

iiiiiiiiiit's christmas

[sheridanwilde.livejournal.com]

I don't have a TV. This means I haven't heard that song in about four or five years. In fact I'd barely know it was christmas if it wasn't for the decorations in the neighbourhood and mentions on friend's livejournals. Radio Four doesn't overdo it on seasonal celebration, apart from on the days themselves, when we get loads of goodies in the forms of new adaptations and comedies and the like.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

I am happy to say that I have never heard this song.

[panzer-attack.livejournal.com]

But it is the bestest Christmas song ever! (perhaps after Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull)