The season for carols is here. Will the classics give way to something new? : NPR

For the second week in a row, the top 10 songs are on Billboard The Hot 100 is packed with holiday perennials … and Kendrick Lamar. With Christmas songs that fill the entire Top 5 – and Mariah Carey posts another week at no. 1 — you’d be forgiven for not noticing that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” has logged its first week ever as the nation’s top holiday single. Over on the album list, Taylor Swift’s The Ward of Tortured Poets holding no. 1.

Plus, with the usual holiday hits gracing the top of the pop charts, it’s time to dig a little deeper into Billboard Holiday 100 and get a feel for which more recent vintage songs have a chance to dominate the pop charts this coming December.

TOP ALBUM

Last week, Taylor Swift reminded us that we’re all just little insects working in a pop culture ant farm of her creation. When Swift feels particularly motivated to keep her team at the top of the album chart—as she did for nearly four months this spring and summer—she simply releases a series of discounted digital editions with new bonus tracks or live songs. And when she really wants to storm back to the top of the charts, she does what she did on Black Friday: releases the first physical copies ever The Ward of Tortured Poets‘s 31 song The anthology edition. These CD and vinyl editions, which have been sold exclusively at Target, were enough to propel her back to the top Billboard 200 for a 16. and now the 17th week in a row.

That leaves Kendrick Lamar’s latest, the surprise release GNX, fixed at no. 2 for the second week in a row following its debut week atop the chart. With Lamar continuing to post three songs in the Hot 100 singles chart’s Top 10 — an especially impressive feat considering the throng of holiday non-perishables spanning the entire Top 5 — GNX is not a bad thing in itself. But it’s hard to top an artist who refuses to budge.

With two fixed objects at the top Billboard 200, it might be easy to miss the latest data point in the mainstream embrace of K-pop music in the US: Two K-pop albums debut in this week’s Top 5 simultaneously. ROSÉ’s rose — it’s the solo debut of the BLACKPINK member, whose Bruno Mars collaboration “APT.” has been a viral hit — entering the charts at no. 3, while girl group TWICE hits the Top 10 for the second time this year, which Strategy debuts as no. 4.

Sabrina Carpenter’s massive 2024 brings with it a fresh milestone: She now has two albums in the Top 10, which Short n’ Sweet holding no. 5 and her 2023 holiday EP Fruit cake goes back in Billboard 200 on no. 10. Fruit cake came out without a ton of fanfare last year – no surprise given how much Carpenter’s profile has grown in the past 12 months – but is now enjoying a fresh physical release, not to mention the singer’s newfound status as a household name and her new released Netflix holiday special.

Top 10 rounds of both old and new juggernauts: The Evil the soundtrack dives from no. 3 to no. 6, Michael Bublé’s Christmas continues to leech out all the odd feelings from the season while holding on to the no. 7, Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas climbing from no. 9 to no. 8, and Billie Eilish’s Hit me hard and soft falls from no. 6 to no. 9.

TOP SONGS

Streaming has had countless effects on the way we listen to music, as well as on the road Billboard measures the success of songs and albums. The main problem with the latter lies in the way streaming algorithms feed listeners music they’ve already streamed before, creating a doom loop that sets an extremely high bar for any new music that might hope to crack, let alone top, the charts.

The Billboard charts therefore tend to produce a chaotic mix of volatility and predictability. In previous eras, the Hot 100 would be dominated by songs you would hear on the radio and/or buy as physical singles. But we’re now getting charts where one album can load the Top 10 all by itself due to a high volume of streaming. (Taylor Swift’s The Ward of Tortured Poets locked down the top 14 songs on the Hot 100 for a single week last spring.) And when holiday songs inevitably rise to the top of the charts, they do so in an unnervingly predictable lockstep.

On this time 10 years agowhen streaming was far less common, the top holiday song was Mariah Carey’s then-20-year-old “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which jumped from No. 50 to no. 40. At this time five years agowith streaming habits entrenched, the song hit no. 1 for the first time ever – and has returned to the top spot every year since. This week it is holding no. 1 for the second week in a rowand a 16th week overall.

The 16-week run, spread over the past six holiday seasons, has lifted “All I Want for Christmas Is You” into a four-way tie for the third-longest streak at No. 1 in the chart’s history, following the 19-week campaigns of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)” in 2019 and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” earlier this year. By the way, one of the other three songs with a 16-week run belongs to … Mariah Carey, whose Boyz II Men collaboration “One Sweet Day” smashed milestones in 1995 and ’96 — and held the all-time record for more than two decades.

It’s one thing to be able to guess that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” will top the charts for a few weeks at the end of every year. The crazy thing is how predictably the same four songs round out the rest of the Top 5. This week, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” holds the No. 2; it’s the song’s 13th week in a row at no. 2, where they all spent huffing Mariah Carey’s exhaust. Bobby Helms’ cursed “Jingle Bell Rock” climbs from No. 5 to no. 3 this week — a tough pill to swallow for those of us who have never once voluntarily listened to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Wham!’s “Last Christmas” dives from no. 3 to no. 4, and Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas” jumps from no. 10 to no. 5. At this time last year? The same songs were queued up in exactly the same order. In 2022? They were five of the top 6 songs of the week.

It’s worth noting, to give a sense of how new this phenomenon is, that only three holiday songs have topped the Hot 100 since its inception in 1958: “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (for three weeks last year’s holiday season) and “The Chipmunk Song” by The Chipmunks and David Seville, for four weeks way back in December 1958. Other mega-perennials, like Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” were massive charts, but they predate the Hot 100 by years, if not decades.

So here we are in a timeline where five irrepressible holiday classics tower over everything, and one of them is “Jingle Bell Rock.” This week’s Top 10 rounds of well-known powerhouses of a different nature. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” climbs from no. 9 to no. 6, making it the highest-charting non-holiday song for the first time in its 17-week chart run. Three songs from Kendrick Lamar’s GNX sit in the Top 10 for a third week: “Luther (feat. SZA)” falls from no. 6 to no. 7, “TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)” plummets from no. 4 to no. 8, and fhv. Chart-topper “Squabble Up” slips from no. 7 to no. 10. And finally, Shaboozey hangs in there for at least one more week of Top 10 glory, as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” slips from No. 8 to no. 9.

WORTH NOTE

In 2011, less than two years before Billboard began publishing a chart to reflect trends in streaming, the release introduced a holiday-specific chart: Holiday 100.

Because Billboard only publishes the chart for a few weeks each year, there have been only 71 individual iterations of The Holiday 100 in the chart’s history. And surprisingly, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has topped the charts 63 of them. But what’s almost as striking is that a full quarter of the songs — including more than half of the Top 40 and all of the Top 6 — have charted in every single week of the chart’s existence.

So if you’re looking for new Christmas music – fresh tracks to liven up the Christmas canon – it’s hard to find much of it on Billboard charts, even with 100 spaces to go around. In fact, there is right now in everything thaw 2024 songs on this week’s Holiday 100: Laufey’s “Christmas Magic” (No. 53) and a new version of “White Christmas,” in which a long-dead Bing Crosby duets with V of BTS; both songs also skim the lower regions of this week’s Hot 100, respectively hitting no. 79 and no. 93. (V and Park Hyo Shin’s new “Winter Ahead” hit last week’s Holiday 100 at No. 62 and hit No. 99 on the Hot 100, but it dropped from both charts this week.) A handful of other recent vintage songs — such as Sabrina Carpenter’s “Santa Doesn’t Know You Like I Do” from 2023 – pops up here and there, but they are overwhelmed by old chestnuts from Andy Williamses in the world.

Last Friday I had went on All things considered to discuss why the Christmas canon is so heavily tilted towards older songs – and more to the point why we haven’t had a new colossal holiday hit since 1994’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” And one thing that came up briefly is also worth noting here: The future queens and kings of Christmas have been lining up to take a shot at Carey’s throne — and, as it turns out, a handful of their latest songs have been slowly gaining steam.

For every Michael Bublé or Andy Williams who gets thawed out every Thanksgiving, there’s a modern pop star whose carol is nearing inclusion in the holiday canon. Some have made a tradition of going big on the holidays, like Kelly Clarkson, whose 2013 hit “Under the Tree” keeps flirting with the Top 10 every year. (It’s never climbed higher than No. 11, but it jumps from No. 20 to No. 15 this week.) Ariana Grande’s 2014 single “Santa Tell Me” — another relatively recent vintage that never quite hit the top 10 – jumps from no. 19 to no. 14. Considering the chart success of Fruit cake this week, as well as her aforementioned Netflix special, it looks like Sabrina Carpenter is carving out her own perennial Christmas lane.

In other words, don’t assume that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is impervious to fading — or to serious competition for holiday supremacy. It won’t happen quickly, as Perry Como’s ongoing chart success suggests. But even on Billboard charts, nothing lasts forever…

…except, it seems, Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.” This week, Billboard named it the #1 song of 2024—a feat it achieved through not only popularity but longevity. The track debuted on the Hot 100 way back in August 2023, spent 45 weeks in the Top 10 this year and peaked at No. 1 in March. Still, even with 13 holiday songs ahead of it, it sits comfortably at No. 23.