Is East 17's Stay Another Day actually a Christmas song?
- Published
"On the one hand, it has bells, snow and silly outfits. On the other, it is actually about death."
Here's one final debate to tear the nation apart just before Christmas.
Some Christmas songs are so clearly, incontrovertibly festive that you imagine they were composed using tinsel, glitter and baubles. Think Mariah's All I Want For Christmas Is You, Shakin' Stevens' Merry Christmas Everyone, and The Pogues' Fairytale of New York, which Ed Sheeran recently covered to, erm, mixed reviews, external.
But then there are the songs that have been subsumed by the Christmas song-industrial complex, by virtue of being either the Christmas No 1 or because they have faint Christmassy notes and themes throughout.
Take, for example, Stay Another Day, by East 17, which was the UK's Christmas No 1 in 1994.
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The song was composed as a heartfelt reaction, external to the death of band member Tony Mortimer's brother, yet despite those origins, the song features on a whole raft of Christmas compilation albums, and it's a mainstay on radio at this time of year.
It even has two music videos, with one ramping up the festive feeling, draping the four boys in white outfits and furry parkas, external, as badly digitised snow falls around them.
There's also a clear Christmas bell chime section at the end of the track.
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All of which adds up to a Christmas song, right?
Not everyone is convinced. In fact, YouGov has just polled the British nation on the matter.
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About one-third of respondents (34%) say Stay Another Day is not a Christmas song, while 29% say it is. Moreover, a large proportion of people (37%) say they don’t know, which includes all of those who are unaware of the song.
Twitter - the prime location for these types of fraught cultural debates - is similarly split on the matter. When Richard Osman featured the song in his World Cup of Christmas Songs, external this week, the fault lines were exposed.
Others jumped in to defend the song's festive credentials.
This guy even re-opened this old wound.
One site has done an exhaustive analysis, external of contentious Christmas songs, and concluded that Stay Another Day is - wait for it...
"Christmassy. Just."
What do you think?
The debate over Stay Another Day also calls into question other songs that we associate with the festive season, even if they're not strictly Christmas songs. What about the Spice Girls' 2 Become 1, another Christmas No 1 from 1996? Or The Power Of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, which doesn't mention Christmas but makes the Nativity the centrepiece of its video?
Then there's Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, the problematic Baby It's Cold Outside, and Frosty The Snowman, none of which actually mention Christmas, but are still considered festive classics.
Maybe this should be the test of whether or not we can call a song 'Christmassy'?
So which of those non-Christmas songs do you consider most Christmassy? You can rank them below.
