Culture chat: a Christmas music special

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This Friday, we are bringing you a festive music extravaganza! We’re talking all things Christmas music: the classics, the duds, the Cher album, and how the genre is changing. What are the best and worst Christmas songs? Why are old songs suddenly charting? And the eternal question: how soon is too soon to pull out the playlists? Lilah is joined by pop music critic Ludo Hunter-Tilney, and Taylor Nicole Rogers, the FT’s Labour and Equality correspondent.

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We love hearing from you! Write us. You can email us at [email protected] or message Lilah on Instagram @lilahrap.

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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):

– Look out for Ludo’s Christmas round up, out next weekend. In the meantime, here’s his roundup of the best pop albums of 2023, including Lana Del Rey and The Chemical Brothers: https://on.ft.com/3RKPtdm

– Ludo is on X at @ludohunter. Taylor is at @TaylorNRogers

We have compiled a Spotify Christmas playlist for you, with all of the songs we talked about! Listen to it here.

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Special FT subscription offers for Life and Art podcast listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/lifeandart

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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner. Clips courtesy of Sony Legacy, Fervent, A&M, Republic Records, Island Records, and Motown.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show.
0:07.0	Today we have decided to make a festive show by taking on a topic that comes around every year, over and over.
0:13.5	We keep getting older, it stays the same, and that is Christmas music. We will talk about the songs we love, the songs we hate, and why it all
0:21.7	exists. I am joined by two very special guests with quite strong opinions on the topic.
0:26.3	From London, the FT's longtime pop music critic and a great friend of the podcast, Ludovic Hunter Tilney.
0:32.9	Ludo, welcome.
0:34.1	Thank you, Lila.
0:35.3	And here with me in New York is the FT's U.S. Labor and Labor and Equality correspondent, my neighbor in the newsroom, and a true Christmas music lover.
0:42.3	The wonderful Taylor Nicole Rogers. Hi, Taylor.
0:45.3	Thanks for having me, Lila.
0:46.3	Thanks for being here.
0:47.3	Okay, so before we jump into the songs themselves, I would love everybody to place themselves.
0:53.3	What is your big picture feeling about Christmas
0:57.0	music as a genre? Ludel, why don't you start? I remember you was a real Christmas music
1:02.1	hater, but maybe that's changed. Well, that's a strong word, Lila, a strong word. What I would say I
1:06.8	have is a limited tolerance for like Frosty the Snowman and for Red Nnosed rainiers and for chestnuts roasting on open fires, for children's choirs and sleigh-bells, I have very limited tolerance. And my tolerance level tends to be reached earlier and earlier each year because there's so much Christmas music as we know. So it's roundabout now that I find my tolerance for all of these things, which on another day, and a more perhaps sunnier one, I could put up with.
1:30.4	Taylor, what about you?
1:31.9	I love Christmas music.
1:34.0	I, in contrary, I tend to listen earlier and earlier and earlier every year.
1:40.4	I just think it's a genre that has like amazing variety. Like you have everything from like
1:46.7	the old hymns to like really creative pop music that's coming out every year. I just love how
1:52.4	you're positive and full of love and joy it is. In contrast to a lot of the other music that I
	...

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