Co-written by Dr Clara Neary from the Department of English and Dr Ruth Dockwray from the Department of Music, Media and Performance.

This enduring festive hit was first released in December 1973 and charted at No. 1, staying in the charts for nine weeks and selling over a million copies. It has been re-released in every decade since, charting a total of 18 times. It regularly tops the polls of the UK's best Christmas song and, almost five decades later, continues to net the band an estimated £0.5m a year in royalties. In 2009, PRS for Music, the copyright collective responsible for collecting royalties, estimated that approximately 42% of the world’s population may have listened to this song[1]!

Structurally, the song has a typical pop-song structure, with clearly defined introduction, verse, chorus and bridge sections. Musically, the song’s introduction, preceding the entry of the lyrics, is particularly powerful, consisting of a simple descending bassline – B♭ A G F – which seems to be written in the key of B♭. This is suggested by the clear directionality of the scale which moves downwards towards what the listener assumes is its tonic or ‘home’ note B♭, and this is reinforced by the repetition of each note in the sequence. This is, however, a musical ‘sleight of hand’ as the bass falls to a D at the end of this descending sequence. D is therefore revealed as the dominant and it becomes evident that the pitch has returned to its actual ‘home’ key of G major. This sudden key change is unexpected and plays a mischievous trick on the listener.

The song’s three verses are in the key of G and follow a typical pop-chord progression which is musically simple and will feel familiar to the listener. In terms of sentence type, each verse is mainly composed of interrogatives or questions. For example, the five lines of the first verse contain four questions: “Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?”; “Does he [Santa] ride a red-nosed reindeer?”; Does he turn up on his sleigh?”; “Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?”

Full article :
https://www1.chester.ac.uk/news/merry-x ... ive-anthem

It ay Christmas till Noddy sez so!

Coincidentally I watched Slade in Flame recently on YouTube. Heavy for it's time.

WTF has this got to do with Cambodia?

Stravaiger wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 1:02 pm WTF has this got to do with entertainment ?

Yea, should be moved to the Religion Forum.