Mariah Carey released "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in 1994 to moderate success. Today, the song is a megahit and Christmas playlist staple. What happened? WSJ's John Jurgensen called up the "Queen of Christmas" to find out. This episode was originally published on December 11, 2020.We'll return with something new on January 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Mariah Carey's Christmas hit?
Hey, it's Kate. It's that time of year again, so we're rerunning a holiday classic. It's about one hit holiday tune, how it came to be, why it endures, and what its success says about the larger forces shaping the music industry. The song in question, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You. Enjoy.
This winter, our colleague John Jurgensen has been living, breathing, and writing about Christmas music. One song in particular.
I've had, like, my ears tuned for those little bells that start the song. You know, it might be in a car that's passing. It might be on TV. certainly on the radio because my wife has Christmas music on repeat pretty much from Thanksgiving through January. So I hear it a lot in my house also.
That song is Mariah Carey's smash hit, All I Want for Christmas is You.
I don't want a lot for Christmas There is just one thing I need
This song feels like it's everywhere this time of year. And the numbers back that up.
It is the star on top of the tree under which all other Christmas song ornaments can't even get close. So last year, it got about 309 million audio and video streams. And by comparison, the second most popular Christmas song last year, which was Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, that old chestnut, that got about 193 million streams last year.
All I Want for Christmas is so popular, it's easy to forget that it hasn't always been like this. The song's surge to the top of our collective playlist happened fast, and it actually happened pretty recently. John wanted to know why.
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Chapter 2: How did Mariah Carey and John Jurgensen connect?
The question I had was how a 26-year-old song that's been around so long and it's been part of the Christmas landscape for decades can have this kind of vault into ubiquity and also do so exponentially. We listen to Christmas music every year of all varieties. Why is this one heads and tails above all the rest?
So John, who covers the entertainment industry, went straight to the source and called up the queen of Christmas herself.
Hi, Mariah. Hi, John. How are you? Great to see you. Great to see you as well.
Chapter 3: What made 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' a massive success?
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. Coming up on the show, the rise and big business of All I Want for Christmas is You.
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So this is the first time I've actually spoken to Mariah. I've written about her in the past, but this is the first time I've ever got a chance to interview her.
John wanted to talk to Mariah about how All I Want for Christmas got so big. But the official reason for the call was her new project for Apple TV, Mariah Carey's magical Christmas special.
There's clearly room for this Christmas business of yours to grow. Tell me what your priorities were for this year.
every Christmas, my goal is to be festive and to celebrate. And it's really, it's funny because when you said this Christmas business, I know that it's a business, but it really is a true, I don't know how to explain it except that I think I love it more than anybody. And I really think the special is going to make people get in the Christmas spirit.
I can't create like festiveness for people if they I mean, I can try. I do try. But if they're not into it, I can't make them have as much fun as I do with it. But, you know.
So you were on a video call with Mariah Carey.
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Chapter 4: How did Mariah Carey feel about creating a Christmas album?
Yeah.
What did it look like?
I mean, I think that Planet Mariah is a special place under any circumstances, but at Christmas time, it certainly is much more extravagantly decorated.
I go over the top. Yeah, it's an over-the-top thing. I'm sitting here with Christmas trees in my house. Like, there's eight trees here. Whatever. It's completely over the top.
I only saw about four in the background of my video call, but I'll take our word that there were eight in the whole household.
These days, Mariah Carey is all in on Christmas. But she wasn't always. John says when her label first pitched the idea of a Christmas album, she was skeptical. This was in the early 90s, when Mariah's fame was in full swing.
So to put that into context, this was about a year after she released her third album, Music Box. Smash success, you know, this is an artist on the way up in every sense of the word. And so, especially at that time, Christmas albums, Christmas music was perceived as something that someone was going to do when they're over the hill.
Because when I first did it, I was like, am I really doing a Christmas song right now? This feels very premature to me. And I really have to say it was such a smart decision to do it. And All I Want for Christmas is You was the first song that I wrote and recorded for that album.
So there's kind of a hagiography around the song that doesn't really involve her co-writer. As the sort of history and lore of this song has been recounted, she was tasked to write Christmas music. She was sort of sequestered in this house upstate, trying to put herself in the mood. And so in one room of the house, she had It's a Wonderful Life, the classic Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie playing.
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Chapter 5: What unique elements make the song timeless?
Chapter 6: What are Mariah Carey's Christmas traditions?
So to put that into context, this was about a year after she released her third album, Music Box. Smash success, you know, this is an artist on the way up in every sense of the word. And so, especially at that time, Christmas albums, Christmas music was perceived as something that someone was going to do when they're over the hill.
Because when I first did it, I was like, am I really doing a Christmas song right now? This feels very premature to me. And I really have to say it was such a smart decision to do it. And All I Want for Christmas is You was the first song that I wrote and recorded for that album.
So there's kind of a hagiography around the song that doesn't really involve her co-writer. As the sort of history and lore of this song has been recounted, she was tasked to write Christmas music. She was sort of sequestered in this house upstate, trying to put herself in the mood. And so in one room of the house, she had It's a Wonderful Life, the classic Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie playing.
She had lights and sort of ambiance of the holiday sort of setting the mood. And she went up, as she recalls it, on this little crummy keyboard that she had available and started plunking out the melody for All I Want for Christmas is You.
So she wrote the song. I have to say, for all the times I've heard it, I never knew that she actually wrote it.
Yeah, I think Mariah's fans love to stress this fact, but I think other people don't necessarily think about it enough, which is that she composed the song. She co-wrote the song. She co-produced the song. She created the song, essentially. Yeah.
Thinking about it, like there's been people that said to me, you wrote All I Want for Christmas Is You? Like grown adults that assumed it was a remake because that was the vibe I was trying to give it in terms of making the record in the first place and writing the song.
And I think people forget because of Mariah's voice and her vocal talents and her kind of glam image. I think a lot of people forget that she's also a songwriter.
How would you describe the song for those people who haven't heard it or those people who probably have heard it but didn't know what it was?
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