There will be no Nigerian Christmas hit song this year

It’s the Yuletide again. We are in high spirits as the air thins up with Harmattan, and everyone gets ready to activate their ‘chilling’ mode.

What a year it has been for Nigerian musicians. There have been over a thousand singles, and 29 mainstream albums in 2015, and as it all ends soon with Christmas providing many with respite from actively recording and releasing new materials.

Christmas is recognised as the season of death for new singles due to many factors. People are too chilled to effectively market and promote your new release, the systems, structures and channels from which the music flows from the studio, down to the public are on holidays, and for those that are operational, their strength is skeletal.

Far be it from any artiste, manager or PR guy worth their salt to engineer the release of singles. This is Christmas baby! Let’s all celebrate.

A number of artistes are contemplating the release of conceptual Christmas songs, with a local twist designed to be a classic Christmas hit. Year after year many have tried, with almost negligible success. Only celebratory songs with little or no allusion to the particular season has received any acceptance and mass appreciation. The rest toil in vain.

We can make a case for the lack of a concerted push by artistes during Christmas to release Yuletide-themed records, with the law of persistence shunned in the face of failed efforts. Perhaps if they a multitude songs and massively promote the records and shove them through our playlists and into our ears and hearts, then there’s a greater possibility of one song winning the lottery.

But that won’t happen. Nobody stays on the field of play, nobody attempts to go the distance, hence nobody wins.

All the blame cannot fall to the artiste. The reality of the situation lies in the brevity of the season. Christmas is short. The celebrations are short, kicking in at the start of December, and extending to mid-January when the collective cash crunch bites in.

Many are scared of banking their next career move and financial investment into a short season. Nobody wants to shoot a video running into the realm of millions and have it removed from rotation on TV in January. From a business angle, this is simply stupidity. It is wiser to take that money, and throw it into your next official pop single.

For now there will be no Christmas single for Nigeria. Mainstream music is heavily reliant on capital to get even the smallest buzz running. In an ideal society, that shouldn’t be the reality. But this is Nigeria, and it is far from the ideal.

Here’s to singing ‘Silent night’ in Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba.