Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

What Makes a Song Christmas-y?

09/12/2022

What Makes a Song Christmas-y? Joe Bennett, professor and forensic musicologist, weighs in on the trends and tropes of holiday music.

By

Tori Donahue

December 8, 2022

Berklee professor and musicologist Joe Bennett is an expert in the analysis of popular music and songwriting.

Image by Richard Wood

Berklee Professor Joe Bennett is a musicologist, writer, and researcher who has spoken at length on everything from song analysis to Eurovision submissions in outlets such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. Bennett also teaches the general elective course Special Topics: Forensic Musicology. We checked in with Bennett at the start of the holiday season to see how his areas of expertise make this time of year extra busy for him.

How did you learn about forensic musicology, and what did you study in order to hone your craft? A forensic musicologist's role is to analyze music-usually two similar songs-to try to figure out if the similarities are due to coincidence or copying. We work with music attorneys, publishers, songwriters, and artists, and assist with resolving copyright disputes. Forensic musicology uses two main approaches: song comparison (for melody, beats, or lyrics) or audio authentication (for alleged sampling). Occasionally, musicologists testify as expert witnesses in court cases, but most of our work is done behind the scenes, hopefully to help everyone to avoid an expensive lawsuit.

How does forensic musicology help your work on copyright concerns and determining similarities or differences between songs? I started in the United Kingdom in 2007 working mostly on projects in London, then when I moved to the United States in 2015 the forensic musicology work went crazy. It's perhaps a combination of the scale of music industry activity here together with the fact that the U.S. is just a more litigious country! My biggest takeaway from analyzing so many songs over the years is that coincidental similarity between melodies is way more common than people think. We've all had that experience of hearing something that sounds a bit like something else, but the majority of the time, plagiarism is not the reason. There are so many tropes in popular music, such as grooves, melodic fragments, and production ideas, that cause similarities to crop up really frequently. A lot of the time, my analysis finds that the subjective similarity between the songs is a simple coincidence, which disappoints many plaintiffs and delights many defendants.

Your research into musicology has taken you to some interesting places, including the creation of the perfect Christmas song. Can you tell us a little bit about how this project came about? Ah, the so-called perfect Christmas song! A few years ago, I was approached by a U.K. chain of shopping malls who wanted to commission a Christmas song to make their shoppers feel happy for the holiday season. So to help the songwriters who were working on the project, we did a corpus analysis of the U.K.'s favorite Christmas songs. We analyzed 78 hits from the top Spotify streams that year, recording meta-characteristics like tempo, key, groove, year of release, and lyric theme, looking for trends in the data. The biggest takeaway was the remarkable age of the recordings, compared to popular music generally; White Christmas, for example, came out in 1942. What other time of year do you hear songs from the 1940s on mainstream radio?

The most common lyric theme [of Christmas music] identified in the analysis was nostalgia: coming home for Christmas, missing those we love at Christmas, reminiscing about Christmases past, and so on.

- Joe Bennett

The U.K. media picked it up and mischaracterized it as the science behind Christmas songs, and to this day I get interviewed about the research every November. The most common question is what's the secret formula? but, as everyone at Berklee knows, there is no formula for any kind of songwriting, just a set of creative choices in the songwriter's craft and an entire production team applying their skills to make the record as good as it can be.

For you-as a musicologist and music lover-what makes a song Christmas-y? Unsurprisingly, the most common lyric theme identified in the analysis was nostalgia: coming home for Christmas, missing those we love at Christmas, reminiscing about Christmases past, and so on. Musically, the one everyone knows about is eight-to-the-bar sleigh bells, which appeared in 49 percent of the recordings we analyzed. And there was an interesting balance to be had in the production. Some of the most common streams had contemporary production values with mid-20th-century arranging tropes. Michael Bubl 's 2011 album, Christmas, which comprised 10 of the 78 songs analyzed in aforementioned U.K. project, is perhaps the best example-it combined traditional big band arrangements with radio-friendly autotune vocals.

What's your favorite Christmas or holiday song? I'm not a person of faith, so personally I gravitate to the secular ones. I love Tim Minchin's White Wine In The Sun, which celebrates family, universal love, and home. That said, for peace-on-earth good vibes, Shaun Colvin's 1998 album, Holiday Songs and Lullabies, is hard to beat, even though it's mostly traditional carols. And who doesn't love all those classic '60s Phil Spector recordings?

Related Categories

Keyed In

News

Most Popular

The Berklee Indian Ensemble received a Grammy nomination in the Best Global Music Album category for its debut album, Shuruaat, released in July.

Image by Mike Ritter

Berklees 2023 Alumni Grammy Nominees: See the Full List Nominees include the Berklee Indian Ensemble, Terri Lyne Carrington, Miguel Zen n, Molly Tuttle, Domi & JD Beck, Big Thief, Danilo P rez featuring the Global Messengers, and many more.

Latest
LINK: https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/joe-bennett-elements-christma...
See more stories from berklee

More from Berklee

03/07/2025

Berklee's Gospel Performance Program Welcomes Jonathan Nelson as the Herb Alpert Visiting Artist

Berklee's Gospel Performance Program Welcomes Jonathan Nelson as the Herb Al...

02/07/2025

Boston Conservatory and the Sphinx Organization Join Forces to Make Classical Education Accessible

Boston Conservatory and the Sphinx Organization Join Forces to Make Classical Ed...

30/06/2025

Berklee at Umbria Jazz Clinics to Host 40th Anniversary Concert

Berklee at Umbria Jazz Clinics to Host 40th Anniversary Concert The celebration will be held on July 10 in Perugia, Italy. By Colette Greenstein June 30, 202...

27/06/2025

How Two Berklee Alumni Landed Songs in the Oscar-Winning Film Anora

How Two Berklee Alumni Landed Songs in the Oscar-Winning Film Anora Joseph Capalbo BM '12 and Lyusi Simon BM '16 share how their collaboration spanned...

26/06/2025

Berklee in Puerto Rico 30th Anniversary Celebration Culminates in Awarding $3.74 Million in Financial Aid

Berklee in Puerto Rico 30th Anniversary Celebration Culminates in Awarding $3.74...

25/06/2025

Study Reveals Stark Gender Gap in Jazz Education

Study Reveals Stark Gender Gap in Jazz Education A new report from the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice and researcher Lara Pellegrinelli finds th...

25/06/2025

Jazz at the Fort Returns, Featuring Yoron Israel and High Standards

Jazz at the Fort Returns, Featuring Yoron Israel and High Standards The performance is part of Berklee's Summer in the City concert series. By Kelly Won...

19/06/2025

Chelsey Green Makes History as Recording Academy Board Chair

Chelsey Green Makes History as Recording Academy Board Chair The violinist, violist, vocalist, and Berklee professor is the first Black woman and youngest per...

18/06/2025

Bostons Dear Summer Mixtape Vol. 3 Features Berklee Artists, DJs, and Producers

Bostons Dear Summer Mixtape Vol. 3 Features Berklee Artists, DJs, and Producers Created by Mayor Michelle Wu and the Office of Tourism, Sports, and Entertainm...

13/06/2025

Berklee's Music Business/Management Department Recognized by the Music Biz Association

Berklee's Music Business/Management Department Recognized by the Music Biz A...

13/06/2025

On Chick Coreas Birthday, a Newly Uncovered Archival Release

On Chick Coreas Birthday, a Newly Uncovered Archival Release The Visitors, composed by Corea and performed by vibraphonist Gary Burton and pianist Kirill Gers...

11/06/2025

Boston Conservatory Heads to Tanglewood This Summer

Boston Conservatory Heads to Tanglewood This Summer Student dancers and musicians from Boston Conservatory at Berklee will debut a new work by choreographer K...

10/06/2025

Berklee Professor Regie Gibson Named First Poet Laureate of Massachusetts

Berklee Professor Regie Gibson Named First Poet Laureate of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey honored Gibson as the inaugural Poet Laureate for the state in...

10/06/2025

Summer Songwriting Programs: Boston or LA? Berklee Lets You Choose Your Coast

Summer Songwriting Programs: Boston or LA? Berklee Lets You Choose Your Coast Whether you head east or west, Berklee offers aspiring songwriters the chance to...

07/06/2025

Berklee Professor's Fulbright Project Addresses Suicide Loss Through Art

Berklee Professor's Fulbright Project Addresses Suicide Loss Through Art Ray Seol's cross-cultural production Another Season draws from personal grief...

05/06/2025

Bob Clearmountain to Receive Honorary Doctorate at Berklee NYC Graduate Commencement

Bob Clearmountain to Receive Honorary Doctorate at Berklee NYC Graduate Commence...

04/06/2025

Betsie Becker Named Executive Director of Berklee NYC

Betsie Becker Named Executive Director of Berklee NYC A veteran arts and education leader, Becker brings a strategic vision for academic innovation and commun...

03/06/2025

Antonio Snchez '97 to Deliver Keynote at Berklee College of Music's Graduate Commencement

Antonio S nchez '97 to Deliver Keynote at Berklee College of Music's Gra...

03/06/2025

Alf Clausen, Composer for The Simpsons, Dies at 84

Alf Clausen, Composer for The Simpsons, Dies at 84 Alf Clausen '66 won two Emmys during his 26-year career on the iconic animated series. By Tara Bellu...

30/05/2025

How Musicians Can (and Should) Use AI-According to Berklee Experts

How Musicians Can (and Should) Use AI-According to Berklee Experts At Berklee's first AI and Music Innovation event, artists and educators explored how ar...

30/05/2025

The Most Underrated Hip-Hop Producers, According to J. Rawls

The Most Underrated Hip-Hop Producers, According to J. Rawls The producer whos worked with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, the Roots, and Common, joined a panel on camp...

23/05/2025

Berklee Global and Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation Host Emerging Talent Intensive Program in Mexico City

Berklee Global and Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation Host Emerging Talent Intensi...

23/05/2025

Berklees 2025 Commencement, Through the Lens of a Graduate

Berklees 2025 Commencement, Through the Lens of a Graduate Photographer Matthew Ryu shares a look at Berklees 2025 commencement from a graduates POV. By Ma...

22/05/2025

Berklee Online Holds Annual Berklee Onsite Music Conference May 30-31

Berklee Online Holds Annual Berklee Onsite Music Conference May 30-31 Kamilah Marshall, a backing vocalist for Taylor Swift, will give the keynote presentatio...

22/05/2025

Music Marketing: 5 Practical Strategies for Independent Artists

Music Marketing: 5 Practical Strategies for Independent Artists Five ways help you build visibility, engage your audience, and grow your fanbase-including one...

20/05/2025

From Death Becomes Her to Dead Outlaw, Boston Conservatory Actors Are Killing It This Awards Season

From Death Becomes Her to Dead Outlaw, Boston Conservatory Actors Are Killing It...

19/05/2025

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout the Boston Area

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout the Bosto...

16/05/2025

Berklee Announces Jonathan Mahoney as the New Dean for Pre-College, Online, and Professional Programs

Berklee Announces Jonathan Mahoney as the New Dean for Pre-College, Online, and ...

15/05/2025

Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Tania Len and Kelli O'Hara at Commencement Ceremony

Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Tania Le n and Kelli O'Hara at Commenc...

15/05/2025

John Yao Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship for Interactive Jazz Project

John Yao Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship for Interactive Jazz Project The Berklee professor and trombonist will debut Let's Make Some Noise, an immersive bi...

13/05/2025

Berklee Artists Take Center Stage at Top Music Festivals

Berklee Artists Take Center Stage at Top Music Festivals Thanks to the Berklee Popular Music Institute, students will perform at Lollapalooza, Governors Ball,...

12/05/2025

Building a Home Recording Studio? Here's What You Need.

Building a Home Recording Studio? Here's What You Need. Experts break down the home studio setup and share tips to create a pro-level recording space on a...

11/05/2025

Berklee Honors Andr 3000 and Sara Bareilles at 2025 Commencement

Berklee Honors Andr 3000 and Sara Bareilles at 2025 Commencement This years honorary doctorate recipients were recognized for their profound influence as art...

10/05/2025

Meet Graduates from Berklees Class of 2025

Meet Graduates from Berklees Class of 2025 Members of this years graduating class reflect on their proudest moments at Berklee and look ahead to whats next. ...

09/05/2025

Berklee Online Signs Transfer Articulation with Conservatorio Nacional de Msica

Berklee Online Signs Transfer Articulation with Conservatorio Nacional de M sica The new agreement allows CNM students in the Dominican Republic to transfer i...

09/05/2025

Berklee Popular Music Institute Announces UK Festival Debut and Tour Dates

Berklee Popular Music Institute Announces UK Festival Debut and Tour Dates For the first time, BPMI will bring Berklee-affiliated artists and students to the ...

08/05/2025

Student Spotlight: Grigori Balasanyan

Student Spotlight: Grigori Balasanyan The Armenian composer, who was named Boston Conservatory at Berklees 2025 student commencement speaker, talks about his ...

02/05/2025

Students, Alumni, and Faculty Represent Berklee at International Computer Music Conference

Students, Alumni, and Faculty Represent Berklee at International Computer Music ...

02/05/2025

Four Boston Conservatory Alumni Nominated for Tony Awards

Four Boston Conservatory Alumni Nominated for Tony Awards Fifteen alumni from Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music contributed to nomin...

30/04/2025

Tania Len and Kelli O'Hara to be Honored at Boston Conservatory at Berklee's Commencement Ceremony

Tania Le n and Kelli O'Hara to be Honored at Boston Conservatory at Berklee&...

30/04/2025

Andr 3000 and Sara Bareilles to Receive Honorary Doctorates at Berklee College of Music 2025 Commencement

Andr 3000 and Sara Bareilles to Receive Honorary Doctorates at Berklee College ...

25/04/2025

Listen to Kim Perlak and Francisco Mela's New Album, Recorded in a Single Afternoon

Listen to Kim Perlak and Francisco Mela's New Album, Recorded in a Single Af...

24/04/2025

Berklee in Puerto Rico Program to Host 30th Anniversary Concert

Berklee in Puerto Rico Program to Host 30th Anniversary Concert The event will feature Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning artist Miguel Zen n BM '98, cuatro...

24/04/2025

Detach Yourself from the Herd': Fito Pez Inspires at Berklee

Detach Yourself from the Herd': Fito P ez Inspires at Berklee In a session hosted by the Mediterranean Music Institute, the influential Argentine musician...

23/04/2025

Berklee Abu Dhabi's Jazz Night Kicks off Global Celebration of Music and Culture

Berklee Abu Dhabi's Jazz Night Kicks off Global Celebration of Music and Cul...

19/04/2025

Berklee NYC and NYC Media Launch Season 3 of Inside Power Station @BerkleeNYC

Berklee NYC and NYC Media Launch Season 3 of Inside Power Station @BerkleeNYC This season features faculty member Arun Pandian as the new host and interviews ...

18/04/2025

Berklee Student Yukai Yang Named 2025 Yamaha Young Performing Artist

Berklee Student Yukai Yang Named 2025 Yamaha Young Performing Artist The drummer secured a spot among the elite winners in this years competition. By Maddie...

18/04/2025

Boston Conservatory Alums Bring Real Women Have Curves to Broadway

Boston Conservatory Alums Bring Real Women Have Curves to Broadway The Latin American immigrant community takes center stage in a new musical featuring Tatian...

17/04/2025

In Return to Berklee, Lucius Looks Back and Moves Forward

In Return to Berklee, Lucius Looks Back and Moves Forward From mood boards to live demos, the alumni band gave students an exclusive look at the process behin...

17/04/2025

Edward J. Lewis III Named Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement

Edward J. Lewis III Named Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Lewis has more than 20 years of industry experience, leading fundraising initiati...