Christmas songs ran out of steam at some point in the mid-1990s.
Yes, we’ve had “Christmas Time” by The Darkness and “Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande – but nobody’s rushing to put them on the aux at Christmas house parties. The culture is crying out for a fresh yuletide anthem, for something new to screech as you stagger home from the pub on Christmas Eve and wake up all your neighbours.
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Happily, salvation may be on its way in the unlikely form of Lil Nas X. The country/hip-hop artist is releasing a Christmas single, Holiday, later this week, and yesterday dropped a teaser trailer.
The teaser sees Lil Nas X time-travel back to a Wild West frontier town, where Santa is getting chucked out of a tavern for being drunk and disorderly. After a quick chat with Michael J Fox (the whole thing is a nod to Back to the Future III) Lil Nas X takes over Santa’s sleigh and flies off, presumably to save Christmas.
The single drops this Friday, the 13th of November. Let’s hope it’s a banger: after the year we’ve had, goodness knows we could all use some festive cheer.
