7:37 a.m. - 2023-12-09
twelve-daze
Was fetching a shopping basket this morning when I heard Bing Crosby's voice ring out over the market speaker. An occasion that, eleven months out of the year, wouldn't bother me...'cause the dude had chops. But it's December, which brings with it the inescapable drag of holiday music programming (the niche genre that essentially hijacked Crosby's legacy). Worse yet--he was singing that most-unbearable carol of them all, The Twelve Days of Christmas. A meaningless manic trainwreck that not even Bing's dulcet baritone can redeem. So what can you do in that situation? What besides put your head down, press-on through the aisles and resign yourself to the fact that the next three (seemingly-interminable) minutes of your life are fucked?
The song's intrinsically-punitive structure makes its hatred of the audience clear. I don't even know what you'd call this sort of lyrical approach, a “dogpile” composition maybe? Because that's what it feels like when you're pinned beneath it: like being crushed into the winter turf as a narrator heaps tree after tree upon your back, followed by bird after bird after motherf*cking bird. And just when the pressure seems unbearable, and you're praying for some sort of musical resolution; gangs of kinetic noblefolk appear...hurling themselves atop the mound as the swollen ranks of a fife and drum corps march inexorably behind.
(Was this the songwriter's intention? To escalate anticipatory dread as the exponential progression of the cast-count is revealed?*)
Whatever faint novelty the tune might suggest at its outset is well-tired by the third verse. “So it's French hens this go-round and then back with the doves again? Oh haha I see good one.” Four stanzas later, as the swans a-swim their way into the picture, your stomach begins to knot and you realize you're trapped. How long will they keep this up, and why? Why? By the time the dancing ladies take the stage I'm suffering from full-blown lyrical PTSD. Shellshocked by an avalanche of repetition; cringing w/each reprise of “five golden rings”.
It's the kind of song that could move one to punch a caroler in the throat. (Behavior I neither advocate nor condone of course, but considering the circumstance...)
*If you happen to be the sort who mumbles compulsive lyric-math to himself in the supermarket, then you already know that the song contains 364 character/gifts in total (376 if we consider partridges and pear-trees as separate entities) and that geese and swans outnumber all other parties.
