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
Full Episode
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.
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?
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