Whatever good you can say about Christmas, it seldom inspires great songwriting. There might be exceptions, but in general your typical Christmas song is either repetitive, hokey, or too much like a commercial jingle. Somewhere – we imagine it was in a dark and windowless basement – someone came up with the idea to combine all three elements into this song.
“Eitt Lítið Jólalag” sounds like it was cranked out in a very uninspired twenty minutes. The only thing that makes it sound remotely Christmas-like is the ad nauseaum repetition of the word “jól.” On top of it all, it sounds like an advertisement primarily because it is. The song was written for Birgitta Haukdal as a promotion for the then-newly opened Smáralind Mall’s Christmas season.
As if Christmas hasn’t become commercialized enough. As if people aren’t already running their credit cards and overdrafted bank accounts into ever-deepening holes each year. As if just the mention of the word “Christmas” doesn’t already inspire a feeling close to a panic attack, completely erasing the feelings of joy and anticipation that it used to make you feel as a kid. Do we really need to go one great cynical leap forward and add to radio playlists a Christmas song invented for the sole purpose of getting people to shop at a new mall?
There may be more worse Christmas songs out there, in the musical sense anyway. But “Eitt lítið jólalag” tops the list of annoying Christmas songs for its unabashed commercialism mixed with mindless repetition.
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