It is the most curious of all Christmas radio format standards – an 82-year-old movie-musical plot song that acknowledges that not every holiday may be inherently joyful. Despite a lyric change that made it more cheerful over the years, it was both hopeful and devastating to hear during the COVID years. It has also become a standard, even though there is not one signature version.
Even though the holiday format has been on the air for less than a week at this writing on most stations, Mediabase shows that there are already 22 versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” among the top-500-played Christmas titles. By comparison, there are 18 versions of the equally ubiquitous “Winter Wonderland.” There are 17 versions of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and 16 of “Sleigh Ride.” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” another downbeat standard with no consensus version, has 11 versions in play.
If “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” belongs to anybody, it is Frank Sinatra, who is also famous for changing its “try to muddle through somehow” lyric to “hang a shining star on the highest bough.” Technically, Sinatra has the second-most-played version in Mediabase with a 1958 rerecording. But if you combine that with his 1947 version, he leads the Carpenters with 134 spins thus far to 102.
In the top 300 alone, there are also Mediabase spins for versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by John Legend, Andy Williams, James Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Sarah McLachlan, Luther Vandross, Amy Grant, Coldplay, Kenny G, and Michael Bublé. With holiday radio’s new additions usually being classic covers, not originals, “Have Yourself” has been a good way to represent acts like Vandross or Taylor who don’t have one widely played original of their own. But radio still finds room for the Grant, Williams, or Bublé versions, despite playing multiple other titles from those artists.
WNOH (The Breeze) Norfolk, Va., one of the first of the iHeart Media Christmas outlets to flip to holiday music, plays 18 versions, led by the Carpenters and Sinatra. Summit’s KSRZ (Star 104.5) Omaha, Neb., has 10 versions, with Streisand, Carpenters, and Sinatra leading. At WFBC-FM4 (Magic Upstate) Greenville, S.C., the first Audacy holiday launch, Sinatra is the biggest of 10 versions, followed by Legend and then a tie between Coldplay, Carpenters, Vandross, and Williams.
It’s pretty well established that Christmas-music programmers are more concerned about playing the biggest hits in the moment, rather than title or artist separation, but the sheer number of versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” makes it a particular candidate for repetition. At one station, the various versions played 18 times a day, often roughly an hour apart, but sometimes at 30–40-minute intervals. By comparison, that same station only played “Feliz Navidad,” the most-played single holiday title and a song that still belongs entirely to Jose Feliciano at most stations, seven times.
In the handful of stations we looked at, the lowest spin count on “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was 9x a day. WLIT (Lite FM) Chicago didn’t play it when it launched Christmas music on Tuesday. But it’s 2 p.m. local time on Wednesday and it has already played it 13 times.
Among Facebook friends, the Carpenters and Sinatra versions found more fans than the other versions, but there were also votes for some that don’t get the same amount of airplay by Lou Rawls, Vince Gill, and Brian McKnight, as well as the Vandross and Pretenders versions. Tom Lawler likes that Rawls “makes it swing and not feel as sad.”
Classic Hits WAKY Louisville’s Jim Franklin also defaults to Sinatra and the Carpenters. He does say that he doesn’t like to start the song this early. “It can be a bit emotional for some who have lost loved ones during the season. We try to keep things as upbeat as possible from Thanksgiving until close to the holiday.”
But as the airplay shows, other broadcasters aren’t hung up on having a holiday song that doesn’t cast Christmas as necessarily the most wonderful time of the year. Some find it therapeutic. “It’s good to have songs that make you stop and reflect,” says Olaf Johnson. “After all, that’s what radio’s all about.”
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