Mariah Carey, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Christmas,” just earned herself another gift this year in the form of two new Billboard records.
Carey’s upbeat holiday pop song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a 17th total week and set a new streaming record, according to the music outlet.
The “Fantasy” and “Emotions” singer-songwriter surpassed her own record at No. 1 on the multimetric chart, Billboard reported Monday. The 1994 song’s latest peak position gives the five-time Grammy winner her longest career lead on the chart, exceeding her previous 16-week run at No. 1 in 1995 and 1996 with her Boyz II Men duet “One Sweet Day.”
“This is amazing!!!! Will never ever ever ever ever take this for granted,” Carey wrote Monday on her Instagram stories, which featured Billboard’s post about the longest Hot 100 reign. “Merry early Christmas!!!!”
The ubiquitous “All I Want for Christmas Is You” also led the the Hot 100 chart for a third consecutive week this holiday season, Billboard said, claiming the third-longest run in the chart’s 66-year history. (At No. 1 are the 19-week runs for Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” this year and the 2019 record set by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus.)
Billboard also reported that “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has spent a record 21 weeks atop the Streaming Songs chart since the chart debuted in 2013 and reigns supreme with 48 million official U.S. streams earned in the week ending Dec. 19. At 20 weeks, “Old Town Road” also previously held that chart’s record beginning in April 2019.
Carey’s Guinness World Record-setting single hailed from her first holiday album, “Merry Christmas,” which she released in 1994 (and reissued this year for its 30th anniversary). It was the first Christmas song she ever wrote, and it came at the nascent of her career. But the December single — an uptempo, longing love song set at Christmastime — immediately shot up the charts and never went away, returning each holiday season and “lodging in the world’s collective unconscious like no Christmas song in at least half a century,” according to a previous Times report.
“This is going to sound like I’m making it up or whatever, but it really did come from a place of wanting to write something that felt like Christmas,” Carey told The Times in 2020. “It wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, we’re going to put some sleigh bells on this record. Or, I’m going to talk about snow.’ I mean — of course I do talk about lots of Christmasy stuff in that song! But I was trying to do something a little different. I wanted to think of everything that made me feel in the holiday spirit. I was casting my mind back. What are the things I wanted out of Christmas as a kid?”
The octave-leaping global superstar, already one of the most successful recording artists of all time, rolled with it, releasing new versions of the established hit and performing it live across various platforms over the last three decades. She sang it as a duet with Justin Bieber in 2011, performed it with Michael Bublé during his third annual TV Christmas special, sang a toy instrument version with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots and delivered a “Carpool Karaoke” rendition with James Corden. A children’s book and an animated film based on the song have followed, with Carey dubbing herself a Christmas monarch and staging an annual holiday show or tour along the way.
The 55-year-old artist previously told The Times that she started writing the song by sitting at a piano and “plucking out notes,” which was uncharacteristic for her.
“I was just sitting there, coming up with this melody, in a dark house with a Christmas tree,” she said, adding that she collaborated with “Hero” and “My All” co-writer Walter Afanasieff for the melody and bridge.
“We wanted it to feel classic. I didn’t want it to feel ’90s. It probably feels ’90s now to people who are nostalgic about the ’90s. But in the ’90s, it was something different… I wanted this to have a different feel. I wanted it to be, you know, timeless. And to feel festive. The background vocals are a really important part of the song. It was an incredible group of singers. I stacked my own vocals in there. We were having the best time in the studio. It sounds corny, but I think you can hear it on the record.”
And very much so in all the records it has set.
Times pop music critic Mikael Wood and freelancer Jody Rosen contributed to this report.
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