Day 41: Not Silent Enough

Today we'll be looking at one of the six songs on Taylor Swifts Christmas album. I'm starting with what's probably the worst song on the album and working my way up from there. There is room for debate as to which song is the worst, but in my opinion it is Silent Night.

Okay, so here's the thing. In a musical vacuum, I don't even think this song is that bad. Taylor's vocals are well done and the background music is nice, but I just can't hear it without getting grossed out. I think the reason is pretty simple. The way Taylor decided to sing this song is just so different from any existing version of Silent Night that people are used to.

In theory, people should listen to this song and pay attention because they are familiar with the original, but remember it because of Taylor's unique take. The reason this doesn't happen is that any good thought ends up being suppressed by how most human brains work. Silent Night is iconic enough that when the song starts we expect the version we are used to, so when we hear something different it causes distress in our pathetic human brains. If the differences are large enough, then we can get over this pretty quickly. If you hear a metal cover of Teardrops On My Guitar then it' not going to frustrate you in the same way since it differs so much from the original. But a Silent Night cover like this one is just close enough to drive our minds crazy. It's so close, just not close enough.

Some of you may recognize this as being very similar to the idea of the uncanny valley. Psychologists out there can probably go into better depth but in principle I think that they do share a lot in common. For those of you unfamiliar, the uncanny valley describes the concept behind how the most unsettling images are those that seem almost human. It's why bad animation often is less off-putting than animation that is almost good. If you still don't get what I'm talking about, just Bing some pictures and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Taylor was clearly trying something different with this song, but I don't think it was different enough. To have a song with better reception she probably should've either done it exactly how people expect, or done it so different that it takes you a minute to figure out which song she's even talking about.

See you tomorrow,
-C