This year, think very carefully before surrendering to the cheese at your Christmas and New Year parties

“Toniiight, I’m gonna have myseeelf, a real..”

..terrible time. The first smug two bars of this worldwide anthem of ubiquity care of Queen make my heart sink, send shivers of nausea through my weary body, and then the adrenaline kicks in. My brain, hitherto knackered with a cocktail of cheap spirits and a vague sense of oblivion, wakes up and screams FIGHT OR FLIGHT, FIGHT OR FLIGHT! If you don’t get out before “having a good time/having a good time..” then you’re inevitably trapped in that sweaty room until the bitter, over-climactic end, by the euphoric flailing limbs of the revelling masses, unaware that what to them constitutes a fun, emotive power ballad is the private living hell of others, such as myself. I was forced to stop repressing my deep, complex aversion to this party-time phenomenon when I read Dorian Lynskey’s interesting, and thankfully non-fawning, analysis in The Guardian of the renaissance of one power ballad in particular that I find too horrendous to name.

And don’t get me wrong, the aforementioned revellers mean well. They wrap their sticky, ever-positive arms round your shoulders, loyally reciting every little atrocious lyric and laboured rhyme too close to your face, all the while smiling away. Sometimes even on the verge of tears at how moving it is that another average night of partying with no occasion or real significance has come to an end. “What? Yeah I love you all, yeah, I really do. Please stop shouting. Ow. My poor, sweet ear. Yeah yeah I love this song, no really! Woooo!” BUT I do not love this song. And indeed, I do love you all, but I cannot be one of you. And hey, I’m no killjoy, I love to revel, it’s just those last 14 minutes that fill me with dread. Because this is when the professional or self-professed DJ, whatsoever their preferences - whether they’ve been dropping some dutty bass riddimz all night, or exciting a crowd of androgynous misfits, wide-eyed through their lensless Wayfarers at every jerky unsigned track – invariably decides it’s time to say cheese. Or rather, play cheese.

The nightmare always descends at exactly that point in the evening when one of two scenarios is in action. Scenario the First: the alcohol/illegal high/enthusiasm gleaned simply from the atmosphere, is wearing off. You are exhausted. You have forgotten all the conversations you had between 10pm and 2am. You have no money. You want sleep and/or a meal. It is precisely at this point when you have to dance energetically to all the verses of Total Eclipse of the Heart right through the powerful key change until you are allowed to go home.

Scenario the Second: what an incredible night, you think to yourself, in that sexy, totally-in-control voice your head speaks to you in when you’re just the right amount of drunk. You’ve charmed and impressed those select people you care about, and lightly mocked the rest. Or at least you think you have because you are so happy and content and never want this night to end. You have fallen in love with everyone in the room. They played Destiny’s Child. TWICE. You look ravishing. And dance with the elegance of a swan. Oh, and you haven’t even fallen over in front of the beautiful people yet. And then... “Just a small-town girl...” Your faith in having a consistently good time is ruined. You go to the bar instead of dancing. You become too drunk, too late. You look begrudgingly onwards to a night of room-spin and being a headachy mess for the next 24 hours.

Here is my this-is-a-balanced-argument paragraph. I understand the charm of cheese, I really do. Power ballads can be motivational, emotional and exciting. All those chunky, uncomplicated chord sequences perfectly composed to dance and sing to with unfettered passion yet without a care in the world, simultaneously. The contemplative minor twang of the bridge. The imminent obligatory key-change; the build-up sparkling with anticipation. Then there are the golden oldies, which have the key ingredient: familiarity. Everyone knows the words. Everyone knows that no one will judge them now. Everyone knows everything is always going to be alright forever.

Fine. But it is undeniably impossible for that moment when the lights come on during Come on Eileen, when the red-faced, aggressive excitement of the mob is visible to all, to be reconciled with any sense of dignity. There is a lapse, the crowd has given in; they have admitted that they are not cool, or mature, or sexy, or alternative, or like really into dubstep y’know. So this year, think carefully about this element of surrender at your Christmas and New Year parties. Yet perhaps the fact that I am embarrassed by this weakness means that I am the weakest of them all, perhaps it is me who should change. Perhaps if I don’t stop believin’ then I can turn and face the change, ch ch changes. Perhaps every now and then I get a little bit terrified, and actually it was now or never and those were the best days of ma life.

Although in reality, I know I am born to run for the nearest exit. Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear.