Christmas Carol of the Year is a reconnaissance mission.

The Mission? FIND AWESOME CHRISTMAS MUSIC.

Using the medium of an ol’ fashioned stoush AKA ‘competition’, CCOTY seeks and sorts songs to find which are the best of the bunch.

There are usually two categories in a year.

The main category is – you guessed it – Christmas Carol of the Year. 

And you’re right – they’re not ‘strictly’ carols – but “Christmas Song of the Year” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. You know what I mean?

Usually there is also a sub-category which is whatever the CCOTY Committee* (CCOTYC) feels like for that year.

What happens and what do YOU need to do?

1. Find a Christmas song that you think is AWESOME!

We don’t want any less. We want a song that you think is AWESOME.
If you find an AWESOME Christmas song – you can SUBMIT it!

Luckily for us all, submissions for these categories can be made from songs released in any year! This means the pool of songs is large and so, the probability of actually finding a quality Christmas song is much higher.

2. SUBMIT the Christmas song that you think is AWESOME (by the due date)

To submit a song, leave a comment or email caroloftheyear@gmail.com
You’ll need, the song name, the artist, and the album it comes from (if applicable). Or a spotify link to the track will suffice.
(And perhaps some words on WHY you think this song is AWESOME!)

All the songs submitted go into a big bucket of ‘submitted’ songs.

3. WAIT while the CCOTY Committee* convenes to choose which of the submitted songs will be nominated.

Songs that are submitted are like songs that have made it to the ‘semi-finals’.
They battle it out, under the watchful eye of the CCOTYC. And then out of the fire of emerges grand finalists for the GRAND FINAL of AWESOME songs.

• Songs that are ‘submitted’ and ‘nominated’ (i.e. make to to the Grand Final) in any given year are unable to be submitted again.
• Songs that are ‘submitted’ but not nominated (i.e. Don’t make it to the Grand Final) can have another go! So don’t lose heart!

4. WATCH as the Finalists / Nominations are announced. 

5. LISTEN to the Songs that have been nominated.

Listen properly, if you can. Not on tinny laptop speakers. And listen to the ENTIRE song. Enjoy the song.
Decide which song you think is the best.

6. Once voting is declared open – VOTE!

You can vote via a poll on this website (One vote per person per category … honesty policy)

7. AFter roughly a week, Voting will close.

Then the votes are tallied.

8. The song with the most votes – wins!

9. And then we CELEBRATE …

… by listening to good Christmas music at Christmas time because we found good Christmas music among the heaps and piles of bad Christmas music and we ponder and appreciate that the suffering of this world has been reduced, just a little bit, because we dared to care about listening to good Christmas music.

MISSION. ACCOMPLISHED.

*Who is the CCOTY Committee?

I’m glad you asked!

It’s a few music-loving friends from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

We love a bit of ‘serious not serious – tongue in cheek’ competition. And we enjoy the robust, frank and fearless discussion over each and every submission that is received. Oh it is NOT for the fragile or faint of heart!

And okay, okay. Yes. To confess, we do have a small ‘anti-a-capella’ bias. But not to say we can’t be drawn! History shows we can.