Switched on Pop - The Imperative Jingle Bells

Episode Date: December 20, 2014

You’ve heard it a million times, you know how to sing it, its ubiquitous during the holiday season, but you’ve never heard a definitive recording. Where does it come from, why is it so catchy, and why of all holiday songs is Jingle Bells the most widely played song? FEATURING She & Him The Cast of Glee Nate Sloan’s Madrigal Singers  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Last year around this time, I was flying to Portland, Oregon to have my first ever Christmas with my now wife and her family. This was a momentous moment for me because I happened to be raised in the Jewish faith, at least until my bar mitzvah, which point that all went out the window. But the point being that I never really understood Christmas. I was surrounded by it.

I was exposed to it. Being in New York City at this very moment, it's everywhere. But I never really got it. If I'm going to be completely honest, it kind of annoyed me. Oh, really? Yes. And what I perceived as the commercialism of it, the kind of the arbitrariness of it. Right, of course.

The symbology of it, I mean. And, you know, and Fox anchors coming on and declaring that there was a war on it. I just thought like, oh, this is so foolish. But the thing that annoyed me the most was Christmas music, which I had to listen to for a month everywhere. I went and it just drove me crazy. This all changed when I actually had Christmas when... Oh, so you came around? Yes.

I mean, totally, complete 180. I'm the biggest Christmas nut now. I just finally made sense to me, the smell of the Christmas tree hanging out all day in your pajamas opening presents and drinking eggnog and just being with your family and loved ones. It's amazing. I like, I get it. I see what it's all about. You're a full convert. I'm a full convert. And with that in mind, I want to take those Christmas songs that I used to detest and see if there's not something there that I can find to love and respect. Because after all, this is the pop music that we're going to be listening to more than any other, at least until December 26th.

Right. That's when Christmas is over, right? When's Christmas exactly? Let's have, should we Google it? That's Siri. So, of all these tunes, what sticks out the most? Well, I got to be real, to me, the most iconic Christmas song is jingle bells. Yes, yes, definitely.

I feel like you've heard it over a million times. you know how to sing it. And I think what's really interesting about Jingle Bells, I was looking at this up the other day is that there's no definitive recording. Right. It's this song that's just like, it just seeps into our culture. It's a part of all of us.

And I also thinking about Jingle Bells and Christmas music got to thinking, where is it come from? Why is it so catchy? Yeah. And why above all of these holiday tunes is Jingle Bell's the most widely played and reinterpreted song? This is Switchdown Pop and I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

Today we're going to take apart jingle bells, put it under the microscope and see what makes this Christmas classic tick. Right. And where should we start, Charlie? I think before we get into the song, we should absolutely hear the song. And I was hoping, Nate, that you might treat us with a beautiful rendition, ukulele style. Well, I just taught myself how to play this instrument two days ago, so bear with me. Perfect. Oh, yeah.

Dashing through the snow on a one-on-one-hurt's open sleigh. Over the fields we go, laughing all the way. As I'm bob-tale's ring, making spirits rise. Oh, what fun it is to sing a slang song tonight. Hey, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride and one-horse open play. Dingle, jingle bell, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride and one heart's all been.

That was just wonderful, wonderful. You'd almost think I was a gentile. You missed a few lyrics. You missed a few lyrics. I'm sorry to say. I believe it's what fun it is to ride and sing. You forgot the ride. Yes.

I knew I missed something there. But I'm very picky. Well, next year I'll have it. it down. Okay, good for all of us. Well, I think there were a couple of things in listening to your gorgeous rendition of jingle bells that stuck out for me. Thank you. And four things in particular. Please. It really made me think a lot about the melody and this really cool rising melody. There is something rhythmically powerful about this song. Yeah. There's a really interesting balance between the chorus and the verse. And then finally, I was really intrigued to see your unique

interpretation of this song. Oh, okay. So I thought maybe we could spend some time and go through each of these elements, starting with the melody. So tell us a little bit, what is going on about the melody of jingle bells that makes it so memorable? So I think you mentioned this, but what's so captivating about this melody is the way that it slowly rises up in pitch.

So we start dashing through the snow. And then we start on the same note, in a one horse open sleigh. but then when we go down, we end a note higher than the phrase before. Right. So that's kind of building this counterpoint, like a line. And then it gets higher again. You're right, oh, the fields we go, and down all the way. And she keeps going up at the end of every phrase where one note higher.

Exactly. So if you just took those notes that at the end of each of those small phrases. Right. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. We just walked up the scale.

Yeah. Right. I think it's really nice. because it builds. Right. Yeah, there's a melody within the melody. Ooh, interesting. Ah. Okay, it's more than just the melody is rising up and getting to this crescendo, a moment of excitement before going into the chorus. There's actually some more delicate composition of two melodies sort of happening at the same time. Precisely, yeah. What else makes this song so melodically catchy? I think one other thing that makes this song so catchy is that aside from being

well written. It's really simple and it has this constrained vocal range, which lends itself for anybody to sing it. We just heard you sing it. If you're singing it, Nate, everybody's singing it. So it's not only well composed, but it's really tight. The vocal range is small. It lends itself to any style of vocal. Yes. And that starts in the chorus with this very first line, jingle bells. Right. And this rhythm, that just sears itself in your brain. What is that rhythm? That is, well, it's two quarter notes and a half note.

It's very simple. Okay. In the Baroque era, they would have probably called that a gavote rhythm. That was like a dance of the time. Today it doesn't have that association, but it does have this kind of bounce and a slight syncopation because we're putting a lot of emphasis on the third beat of the measure. D-da-da-da-da-da-da-d-da-d-d-d-one-two-three.

So if you were to look at this rhythm on paper, it might look really simple, but when you hear it, it's very profound. It's powerful. Yeah, propulsive, I would say. Propulsive. I think you asked me the other day of whether or not you could identify jingle bells just by hearing those three notes. Yes.

I think you could. I would be very curious to do a survey to go out, to go out into the street and just play those three notes for people. An academic survey on jingle bells. Probably around Christmas time it would be easier. If you did it in June, you would get a much different result. You might get more along your sort of Miley Cyrus. Party in the USA? Exactly.

What else? What else is going on here, Charlie? Well, we talked about the verse, and so I think we should talk about the chorus. Yes. Let's go deeper into the chorus. And we talked about the verse's melody, and so we talked about that rising melody. Da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-oh, oh, that was a little flat. Nonetheless, you got it, you got it. A little pitchy, but it's okay. You get the point, and it lends itself, as I said, for anybody to sing it, including myself.

When we land in the chorus, it sounds like an answer to this verse. It's a whole other phrasing style. Well, I think something that's really effective about the chorus is how is its almost monomaniacal focus on the single note that starts the chorus, which is, in this case, the third of the scale. One, two, three, jingle bells, jingle bells. So it's obviously the first note we hear, and then we hear it again, jingle all the way. So there it is again. So the first four measures of the chorus are basically. basically E with a little dressing.

Some ornamentation, if you will. And then for the next measure, we go a half step to the fourth scale degree. One, two, three, four. Fun, it is. But then we go right back down to the third. Right. It is to ride on a one horse up in sleigh. And then at the end of that line, we get to two and five.

But basically, besides that measure where we go to four, and then the last measure where we go to two and five. It's all just surrounding the third. It's all surrounding that E. It's all the same note. It's just this one note. Yeah. It's just one note.

Earlier in the verse, we sort of did that five, six, seven, eight rising up the scale. And now we're just hanging out on the third. So it's really in its own territory. Totally. Yeah. It's a really nice contrast between this very wide-ranging verse melody and this just incredibly focused and distilled chorus melody. Huh.

That is just all about that third. And it's interesting, like the verse, it's just so easy to sing. It's even easier to sing. It's the easiest thing to sing. Even easier, yeah. I think that brings us to the last most interesting point about jingle bells is that it's so easy to sing that it lends itself to infinite interpretation. Correct. It lends itself to contra facto.

Excuse me? That is a very fancy word for me. basically putting new lyrics where the old ones used to be. And I think given your newly discovered love of Christmas and Christmas music, have you found a favorite contra facto? Yes, I believe it goes something like, Jingle bells, Batman smells Robin laid an egg. Batmobile lost its wheel.

Joker got away. Or Joker lost his leg. I don't actually remember how that goes. It must have been interesting to learn that little. interpretation later on in life. Yes. No, no, I knew that when I was a little good. That was some third grade playground stuff.

Yeah, that was, I mean, that was very risque. I think I just got why Robin laid an egg. I never actually, like, put that together. Oh, I didn't either. Because he's named after a bird. Okay, yeah. Let's hammer it in. Oh, God.

But yeah, and what are some other kind of, what are other ways that this song just, like, is really easy to, It absorbs a lot of interpretation. Yeah, well, I feel like it lends itself to utter in. So you can be like jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Hey, right? Yes.

And there's all these places where you can, because there's all this space, jingle bells, space. Jingle bells, space. Yes. There's the opportunity to just put your own thing in there. And because like you said, the melody is so simple. Right. Even you when you were singing it couldn't help but to expand upon that melody because it's so rudimentary. I couldn't.

Couldn't help myself. Yeah. I think the other, my other favorite one of these interjections is laughing all the way. Ha, ha, ha. Right. And is that, I don't know if it's actually in the original lyrics, is it? It's definitely not. Then given that it's been interpreted a million times, where, where is jingle bells coming from?

Give us a little musical logical taste of jingle bells. Where is jingle bells from? This is one, the jingle bells is, in my mind, one of the great Wikipedia articles out there. Because this song is just full of surprises when you start to get into its history. It was written by this gentleman. Let me see if I can remember his name. It's something very 19th century like. Is it Pierpaul?

James Lord Pierpont. Ooh, Lord. Yes, James Lord Pierpont. Who wrote some other songs but isn't, you know, none of them really lasset except jingle bells. He haven't stayed in the canon. He was a new Englander. There's some debate as to where exactly he wrote Jingle Bells. Medford, Massachusetts likes to claim that it's the birthplace of the song Jingle Bells.

They have to claim something. That's all they have. Sorry to the people of Medford. But some other towns also want to claim it. And he did a lot of things. He was a unitarian minister. or pastor rather at one point. So was his father.

You know what's interesting about that, Nate, is that I was, again, one of the most fascinating Wikipedia articles around jingle bells and just Christmas music in general.

I learned that at one point the Protestants actually completely banned Christmas music saying that, oh, it was idolatry. Yeah, you can't be singing to false idols.

And I love so much that we'll get to it eventually is how so much of Christmas music really isn't about the holiday of Christmas. It's so much more just about general. gleefulness, joy, rejoicing, and of course, consumerism. Right.

There's no religious notion to it is written by a Unitarian minister. So actually, I guess, the church brought music back in after the band by the Protestants. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness.

I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being

unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. Drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president.

So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually, every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I'm curious where people think jingle bells come from.

I comes from. I always thought, or if I ever thought about it, that it was just one of these traditional songs that is as old as the earth and who knows where it comes from. But no, this was a published pop song in 1857. What does pop music mean in 1857? We don't have recordings at this time. No, what pop music means is that you buy, you go to the store and you buy the sheet music and then you take it home and you sit around the piano and you play it with your friends. In this case, Jingle Bells actually comes with piano, solo voice, and there's a chorus part. So you can sing four-part harmony with your friends as you're singing Jingle Bell.

This is the original composition. This is the original composition. Yeah, the original published version. Wow. Which changes. We'll play the original version in a second. You can see just how much the song has changed. And we can see that it changed really fast because there's a recording in 1898, which is one of the earliest recordings in existence.

Oh. By the Edison male quartet, as in like Thomas Edison inventor of the phonograph. And a lot more. And they do it based more or less the way we do it now. So in those intervening 40 years. The people, the song that became really popular, just morphed into something new in the hands of the people, I guess. So let's take a listen and see what's going on in the original. Sure.

Do we have that? No. I couldn't find a recording of it. Oh. But I'm going to do one myself. Oh, you are? I'll just overdub the parts, yeah. Okay, great.

Yeah. Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what joy it is to ride in. one noise open say jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way oh a joy it is to I don't want no soap and say

The beautiful rendition, Nate, thank you so much for your four-part harmony. You're very welcome. So given the original, tell me a little bit about what has changed, you say, in just 40 years. The melody has changed to the melody that we were just analyzing the one that's familiar to us today. And then notably, a lot of the lyrics have changed as well.

Like, it used to be, oh, what, sport, instead of, oh, what, what joy, or oh, what fun. So that changed. It's weird. I mean, that's kind of an antiquated word, sport. It's also hard to sing, sport. Right. Sport. Oh, what fun is, what sport?

Oh, yeah. Now, another interesting thing about the evolution of jingle bells since its 1857 inception, is I think an understanding of what part of speech the word jingle actually is in this song. What do you mean? Much like the first word of James Joyce's Ulysses, stately plump buck me, stately plump buck mellion. There's a lot of there, which has a lot of debate over what, whether it's an adverb or an adjective. What is, Charlie, what is jingle? What is jingle?

Well, I would assume that jingle is a verb. Yes, it is a verb. Very good. Ding, ding, ding. To jingle a bell. But I feel like you're trying to trick me. Well, I'm, my suspicion is that most people think of it as an adjective. Oh.

As like a kind of like a jingle bell. Like a kind of bell. Because the way that you make music, Christmas music, is that you add jingle bells or sleigh bells in the background. Right. So jingle is an adjective describing what type of bell it is. Yeah. But it's funny. I mean, because this song is, I've never really thought about it this way, but it's kind of, it's an imperative.

It's like an order. Jingle bells. You, jingle bells. Jingle them all the way. Jingle those bells. It should be, it'd be much more benign if it was jingling bells, jingling bells. Like, we're just jingling bells. that would be that's it's a lot less aggressive than jingle bells but shouldn't it be jingle bells jingle bells jingle

all the way no because you this song now the now i'm realizing that this song is actually sort of an authoritarian order to jake for all the people to jingle their bells buy more crap buy more crap buy it all the time not to stop well in any case you also had I thought there were some interesting other cultural relics that don't really make sense of the modern era. Do you know what I'm talking about? I think I know what you're talking about. So what is it? Well, one question I have actually, because when I actually pause to think about this song, is what is a bobtail?

What is a bobtail? Do you know? I would assume it's like a bobcat's tail, but I don't know what a bobcat is doing in the middle of the song. That's a great guess, but why would there be bells on a bobcat's tail? To warn you, the bobcat is coming. And that makes your spirits bright. Okay, so it's definitely not a bobcat. So what do you think?

Well, I don't know. I mean, I think originally I thought it was like, I guess, the, yeah, the tails of the horses. Oh, okay, okay. But then there's only one. It's a one horse open slay, so then I was thinking, wait, that doesn't make sense. Why would there be multiple bells? Huh. So could it be the top of a hat?

That's also a good guess. It's actually just, I think it's the part of the sleigh. This is what I researched, that kind of sticks out in the back. And the bells on the bobtail would just warn, you know, other people out slaying that there was a sleigh coming. Slay crossing. Slay crossing. What a horrific term. Yeah.

The term does come from an animal having its tail bobbed. Yeah. And so I wonder if the bob of the sleigh is actually, it looks like an animal tail, which has been chopped off. Oh, interesting. Yeah. No, I'm certain you're right. Right, which is one of the darkest things that we decide that we crop off the tail of long-tailed animals. Our next podcast will be all about the entomology of the word bobtail.

I don't know if we can go much further. But you know what I think we can go into is how jingle bells, as you pointed out early on, really is originally a commercial song. Right. And I think it's so interesting that Christmas music at its core feels innocent and pure and about rejoicing and celebration with friends and family. but of course we know that it's just played endlessly in commercial spaces and that might be a hint that actually the whole intent of Christmas music

isn't just to calm us down when people are mobbing each other on Black Friday and to encourage them to buy more things but the music itself is actually deeply commercial as you were saying it was the earliest recording was done by the Edison Male Quartet in 1898. And since then, pop music recordings of Christmas songs have just proliferated. Right. It's the only time of year where if you look at the Billboard Top 100, you're going to see pop songs from the 1950s.

Right. Right. Yeah. Sinatra is not hanging out with us in June typically. It's not, no, he's not topping the charts normally, unfortunately. So it got me thinking, what is it about this music which lends itself to be such a great vehicle for the business of music? Yeah. There were a couple of things that came out.

So the first was that the songs are all past their copyright. Ah. Right. And when you listen to radio plays every single time something goes on the radio, someone collects a royalty for having written that song. The songwriter gets a few pennies and some record company gets a few dollars and it's a very equal to. system, but the royalties are sort of how people make their money off of this music. Yeah. But you only get royalties if the song is copyright.

So many of our Christmas hits are past their copyright, meaning anybody can reinterpret them. Nobody gets any royalties. Being out in the public domain means basically more renditions of jingle bells and so on get recorded by more and more pop stars every single year. Right. They don't have to pay any copyright royalties. Exactly.

Oh, poor James Lord Pierpont is rolling in his grave. Yeah, seriously. It's not him. I think it's the folks of Medford and his extended grandchildren who are just wishing that every time we say it. Which is interesting because in the media, you know that we never hear happy birthday, right? Right. Whenever you see a movie and there's a birthday party, they almost never sing happy birthday because happy birthday, copyrighted, and you have to pay the royalty.

Fascinating. Unless, you know, it's totally possible that that is complete folklore knowledge and I'm way out of date. No, no, that's absolutely right. Please check me. That's absolutely right. Is it really? Yeah. They should sing jingle bells.

They should sing jiggle bells. Instead. Yeah, whenever there's. It's kind of like whenever you see in a film, a phone number and it's always 555 and it totally breaks the fourth wall. And you're like, oh, I'm clearly watching a film. I think they should do that. Likewise, for happy birthday, just sing jingle bells.

You know what's going on. You know what we mean. Yeah, exactly. But there's a problem with this argument that its open source nature leads to the proliferation of endless commercial Christmas music. Because when we listen to Christmas music on the radio, all we hear is music from the 1950s. No, I think you're right. I think the vintage of these songs. creates this nostalgic mood that puts us in a really positive, happy, carefree state of mind.

By listening to 50s music all the time, we may forget that we're not living in turbulent 2014 and actually living in Pleasantville, circa 1952. Right. Some constructed image of another time. And as such, might be so inclined to buy more crap for our. friends and loved ones from the local Walmart. Right, right. That's the more cynical view of it, I suppose.

But it's really true. I was listening just the other day to the cast of Glee, as I want to do. Yes, you're a Gleek. Singing Jingle Bell Rock. And Jingle Bell Rock being, of course, a really radical reinterpretation of jingle bells. And what's interesting is that Glee singing it today, and they recorded it either. or this year or last year or whatever. But it sounds like a 1950s song.

You have that jangley Chetakin style of guitar. It has the sleigh bells. Jingle bell, jingle bell, ring and jingle bells ring. Snowing and blowing a bushels of fun. Now the jingle hop has begun. It's very much trying to take you back to the 50s, even though the show takes place now. No, Christmas is inevitably associated with the past,

with a near past, with the distant past, as with some of the actual old Christmas carols. And if you're burnt out on Christmas music, on these songs that keep cycling back into our eardrums every year, we hear it switched on pop say, go make your own. Absolutely. Go out into your... You shack out in the back of the house.

Write some of your own tunes, record them. You don't have to pay royalties. They're free. You can record it. You can sing it as much as you want. That's right. That's right. Sing them loudly, rejoice with your families and communities.

And though you're probably not going to reproduce a Bing Crosby, you're going to have a lot more fun and your ears will not be worn out by the incessant commercial Christmas music that we hear all the time. Let's start some new Christmas traditions. Switched on pop, Switched on pop, Switched on Pop, Switched on Pop, this way. Nate and Charlie talking shit all the live-long day. I don't have it. I got nothing. This has been Switched on Pop.

I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And we'll be back in the new year with exciting new pop music. But until then, have yourself a merry little Christmas. I was going to have a recording. play that and it's a waya. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotic, irresistible.

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