Guest collaborators, led by John Quigley, our music coach, have created the 2020 JANZ Christmas Music List — if this link doesn’t work, try accessing the link from your phone or home internet (it may be blocked on your work computer). Love it or hate it, this mix of Bubble and Bing always hits the airwaves around now. Why, my family asks, every year around 1 November, do you dominate the house, the car, the boat, the cattle yards with these gooey jingles?
John, an MBA in music management and superb musician explains. Generally, popular music is about putting yourself out there, new relationships, new beginnings, being young and single and dancing,” he explains, referring to Joe Bennett, professor of musicology at Berklee College of Music. “Christmas music is almost the reverse of that, conceptually and lyrically. It is about homecoming, nostalgia, looking back to a more innocent time in one’s life or cultural history.”
There is a neuroscience of music. Now, who would have guessed that?
All music can stimulate the brain’s pleasure centres, apparently, but Christmas music can evoke treasured memories on top of that, courtesy of the brain’s filing system. Tonal patterns and autobiographical events are processed in overlapping regions of the medial prefrontal cortex.
That means even though you might be into avant-garde jazz, death metal, or emo throughout the rest of the year, you may involuntarily turn to mush when you hear White Christmas because your brain associates that song with baking cookies in grandma’s kitchen when you were six years old.
So, on the drive home and in the family lounge, pound out these songs secure in the knowledge that when you do there is a reason for the season and it’s not just your poor taste in music. Santa made you do it!
P.S. In our research we looked for the most popular number one holiday hit. We turned to Billboard. Claiming its familiar perch atop the Holiday 100, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You rules the ranking in 2020, as it has since the list launched in 2011.