Last week I was talking about winter here in Mallorca but thoughts are already turning now to next Summer. Easter falls early next year at the end of March so there’s not too much time to relax. At Pirates we’re already making plans and we have some great offers coming up for next weeks Black Friday. If you’ve got friends or family coming over next Summer you should keep your eyes out for those. Now, dare I say it? Well it’s only 39 sleeps until Christmas! In fact I’m a little late to the party because as soon as Halloween was over the slow drip of Christmas ads had started. The shops started stocking Christmas goodies and Mariah Carey was already warming up her vocal cords.
We’re not halfway through November, but already the widely agreed upon pair of greatest modern Christmas classics, Wham!’s Last Christmas and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, have entered the chart at No 37 and No 40 respectively. Last year, it took until the third week of November for a Christmas song to appear, namely All I Want for Christmas Is You. Each song will now almost certainly remain in the chart for the rest of the year, and possibly into early 2024.
Without doubt if you can write a good Christmas song or in some cases a not very good Christmas song then it could well give you a good income for the rest of your life. The Performing Rights Society or PRS as it’s known don’t tend to divulge this information easily to protect their artists privacy. But it’s a well known fact that the following artists make substantial amounts per year from just one song.
- “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade £1m
- “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl £400,000
- “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey £400,000
- “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby £328,000
- “Last Christmas” by Wham! £300,000
- “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney £260,000
- “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie £120,000
- “2000 Miles” by The Pretenders £102,000
- “Mistletoe and Wine” by Cliff Richard £100,000
- “Stay Another Day” by East 17 £97,000
That’s royalty money but in the new era of listening to music, Spotify also pays out a pretty tidy sum too. Mariah Carey it probably won’t surprise you to know tops that list with a mind blowing 1,206,753,171 streams, yes that’s over a billion. Which will net Mariah a cool £2,968,613.00.
If you’re looking for somewhere to spend a midweek or weekend Christmas shopping then for me Palma has it all. In fact if I was where I used to live in Hertfordshire it would take me longer to get to Lakeside which is a popular Christmas shopping centre than it would to fly to Palma. What Palma can offer that Lakeside can’t is a full array of shops in picturesque streets, 3 shopping centres in Porto Pi, Fan and Mallorca Outlets, history, hotels and unbelievable gastronomy. The lights in the Paseo del Borne rival anything you’ll see in Oxford Street and there are lots of great Christmas markets in close proximity.
In my opinion no Christmas is complete until you get yourself a tree. Not a fake one for me, it has to be real. Last year I met a guy called Quentin who was bringing Christmas trees over to Mallorca from his families farm in Denmark.
Their arborists (aka tree surgeons to you and I) have been growing and selling the highest quality, most sustainable and durable Normann fir Christmas Trees since the industry commenced in Denmark in the early 70´s. Their philosophy has always been to produce quality over quantity, whereby the ethical treatment of the workers, the earth and the clients is always respected and maintained, these are the values which are essential to their organisation. For every 8 trees they cut, they replant 10. We had one in our house last year and the tree he gave to the radio station we gave to the charity Es Refugi through our friends at Yachting Gives Back.
I can’t recommend their trees highly enough and it adds to the good feeling of Christmas.
For more details please go to https://www.mallorcachristmastrees.com or call Quentin 658 342 941.
Take care everybody and enjoy your weekend!
Richie is the MD at Pirates, the islands number one night out featuring Adventure, Reloaded and Gringos.
Follow him on Twitter @DadTaxi1 & Instagram @dad.taxi or feel free to email him at rprior@globobalear.com
Dad Taxi Mallorca 