Finally, Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' is the No. 1 song in the country
You might call it a Christmas miracle. For the first time in the nearly ubiquitous song's 25-year history, Mariah Carey's 1994 jingle, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is the number one song in the country, according to Billboard.
It might (and, frankly, it should) come as a surprise to learn that Mariah Carey's hit holiday tune, one that is synonymous with the Christmas months, has never had much chart success. In fact, it wasn't until the holiday season in 2017 that the song even cracked the top 10. For a number of years, Billboard excluded holiday songs from the charts, but that practice ended in the 80's, which wouldn't explain Carey's hit being absent for so long.
We might have to look no further than streaming numbers, everyone's favorite music industry boogeyman. It appears that, even as the song rose to the level of universal cultural harbinger to the holidays, a whole lot of people weren't going out and buying Carey's 1994 album Merry Christmas in physical form. For the past two weeks, the singer's 94' runaway hit topped streaming charts specifically, followed by radio play and digital sales. In other words, it's taken some time for platforms to catch up to how absolutely major a tune this is.
None of this, of course, should come as much of a surprise. "All I Want For Christmas Is You" might be the last original and new Christmas jingle ever created. It transcends cultural lines, never mind what the Brits have to say about it.
As we ring in the holiday season, let's keep running up the numbers on Mariah Carey's classic jingle. If Lil Nas X could stay number 1 for weeks, beating out Carey's previous record, the least we can do, for Christmas, is give this jingle the respect it deserves.