Which Christmas song became a Bob Rivers parody about 're-gifting'?
The thrice-familiar American Christmas song 'Do You Hear What I Hear?' was written in October 1962, practically as a plea for peace in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike most songs, it has no refrain or chorus. Instead the very title of the song is the second line of the first stanza, immediately followed by a choral echo repeat. It is similarly repeated in the fourth line for a total of three repetitions.
The subsequent three stanzas have similarly situated triple-repeated lines, almost similar in the next two but just different verbs in both, 'see' and 'know'. The fourth and final stanza has an entirely different triple-repeated line: 'Listen to what I say'.
The parody thereof by Bob Rivers is 'Didn't I Get This Last Year?' The title is the triple-repeated line in all but one stanza, wherein 'we' just replaces 'I'. The title should suggest a satire about ill-considered and aptly ill-received second-hand Christmas gifts.
Rivers (born 1956) is a retired American on-air radio personality, but he is far more definable as a prolific satirist, particularly for Christmas parodies and novelty songs. One need only take a cursory glance at his work and pick out a few titles to grasp his unique wit: 'Restroom Door Said Gentlemen'; 'I Came Upon A Roadkill Deer'; 'Walking Around In Women's Underwear'; 'Manger Six' and 'Twelve Pains of Christmas'.
More Info:
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