Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ sets 2 new records

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 Christmas pop song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” has peaked Billboard Hot 100 chart for a 17th week overall and set a new streaming record, according to the music outlet.

The “Fantasy” and “Emotions” singer-songwriter surpassed his own record of no. 1 on the multimetric chart, Billboard reported Monday. The song’s most recent peak from 1994 gives the five-time Grammy winner her longest career lead on the chart, surpassing 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 take this for granted,” Carey wrote about her on Monday Instagram storieswhich featured Billboard’s entry on the longest Hot 100 run. “Merry early Christmas!!!!”

The ubiquitous “All I Want for Christmas Is You” also led the Hot 100 chart for a third straight 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 at the top Overview of streaming songs since the chart debuted in 2013 and reigns with 48 million official US streams earned in the week ending December 19. After 20 weeks, “Old Town Road” also previously held the record for the record that began in April 2019.

Carey’s Guinness World Record single came from her first holiday album, “Merry Christmas,” which she released in 1994 (and re-released this year for its 30th anniversary). It was the first Christmas carol she ever wrote, and it came at the beginning of her career. But the December single — an uptempo, yearning love song set at Christmas time — shot up the charts immediately and never went away, returning every holiday season and “lodging into the world’s collective unconscious like no Christmas carol in at least half a century,” according to a previous report from the Times.

“This is going to sound like I’m making it up or whatever, but it really came 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 want to talk about snow.’ I mean – of course I’m talking about lots of Christmas stuff in that song! But I tried to do something a little different. I would think of all the things that made me feel in the holiday spirit. I returned my thoughts. What are the things I wanted out of Christmas as a child?”

Already one of the most successful recording artists of all time, the octave-jumping global superstar rolled with it, releasing new versions of the established hit and performing it live across various platforms over the past three decades. She sang it like one duet with Justin Bieber in 2011, it performed with Michael Bublé during his third annual TV Christmas special sang a toy instrumental 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 began writing the song by sitting at a piano and “picking out notes”, which was uncharacteristic of her.

“I just sat there and came up with this tune, 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 for the ’90s. But in the ’90s it was different … I wanted this to have a different feel. I wanted it to feel, you know, celebratory. It was an incredible bunch of singers. I stacked my own vocals in there. We had the best time in the studio. It sounds corny, but I think you can hear it on the record.”

And to a great extent in all the records it has set.

Times pop music critic Mikael Wood and freelancer Jody Rosen contributed to this report.