After 25 years of being the soundtrack to everybody’s Christmas, Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You has hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 – the first holiday track to take the position since “The Chipmunk Song” in 1958-59. Frankly it deserved to be there from the day it was dropped in 1994, so why did it take so long?
When the song was first released, it wasn’t a commercially-available single and therefore was ineligible to chart according to the rules that were in place at the time. It did manage to reach number 12 on the Radio Songs chart that year, so it’s not like it was totally ignored, either.
Since then, rules have had to change. The way we listen to music these days is just a tad different from the way we listened to music in 1994, after all. In 1998, the rule banning noncommercial singles was lifted, and All I Want For Christmas Is You hit the Top 100 for the first time. It spent a week at 83 in January, 2000.
In 2012, streaming was added as a criteria to consider when assessing the Top 100, and older songs were allowed to be counted if they made a comeback for whatever reason – for example, Christmas. Ever since then, All I Want For Christmas Is You has hit the Top 100 every single year.
In 2017 it entered the top 10 for the first time and hit number nine on the chart. In 2018 it hit number three, before finally taking the crown this year.
While this is obviously a pretty amazing achievement for Mariah, she’s sitting on the cusp of some even bigger ones.
All I Want for Christmas Is You is Mariah’s 19th number one hit. The only artists with more number one songs than her are the Beatles – who have 20 – so she’s right on the cusp of equalling their record.
This number one also means that Mariah has had a number 1 in the ‘90s, ‘00s, and ‘10s. Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Usher also Nobody has ever had a number one in four decades, so if All I Want For Christmas Is You can cling on until January, Mariah will be the first person to have a number one in four different decades.
So pop it on, sing all of the words (because I know you know them all), and all hail our new Queen, Mariah Carey.