Recently, YouTube Music unveiled its chart placements, and it’s no surprise that Mariah Carey remains on her Christmas throne. Carey’s tune All I Want for Christmas Is You soars to No. 1 on YouTube’s charts. At the end of November, her spirited record returned to the US weekly music magazine Billboard Hot 100 at No. 17, accumulating 14 million streams, which was an overall 29% increase in plays, according to Luminate, an analytics platform revealing trends and insights across film, television, and music. In its latest report, Carey skyrocketed to No. 4 on the Hot 100 with 22 million streams (giving it a 57% boost) and 15.6 million airplay impressions.
Success is unforgettable
Although All I Want For Christmas is You may be the most well-known Christmas song, the highest-selling festive tune is Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. It has sold an estimated 50 million copies. That not only makes it the top-selling Christmas song, but it is also in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest-selling single of all time.
Crosby actually holds also number two on the Christmas songs ranking with his 1978 version of Silent Night and more than 30 million copies sold.
Mariah Carey and All I Want For Christmas is You, a six-time multi-platinum single, occupy third place with 16 million copies sold worldwide. The single has broken the record for the longest gap between release and reaching number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom, at 25 and 26 years, respectively.
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Fluid kind of Vocal
Carey’s songwriting partner of over four years, Walter Afanasieff, said about the making of the later hit: “Back then, you didn’t have a lot of artists with Christmas albums. It wasn’t a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs. So we were going to release it as kind of an everyday, ‘Hey, you know, we’re putting out a Christmas album. No big deal.'”
From a melodic standpoint, a combination of Carey’s “playful” vocals and the nostalgic quality of the music have helped this tune stand the test of time, music and communications study professor Murray Forman told the Northeastern Global News portal.
“It opens with Mariah at her diva-esque best,” he said. “She hits notes that other people can’t. She’s got such a fluid kind of vocal that stands out right at the beginning. But then it becomes like a 1960s girl group hit (with piano and that girl group vocalization). The very aesthetic of the song is structured on the one hand, showing this is Mariah at her peak, and then we go to something that’s super familiar, recognisable, and catchy as hell that a lot of people in the 1990s would be familiar with.”
Major Earner for the Singer
The 1994 Yuletide classic is so popular that it remains a lucrative source of income for Carey every year, largely due to the royalties that she is owed for third-party usage. A report from the New York Post estimated that she makes around USD 3 million every year from the song. In 2021, it was claimed that Carey has raked in more than USD 60 million from All I Want for Christmas is You and she continues to profit from the track. She also enjoys a number of sponsorship ties, thanks to the song. In 2021, to mark the 25th anniversary of her Christmas album, Carey starred in the festive advert for Walkers Crisps.
