Why Mariah Carey’s Christmas hit will be around forever
How did 1994’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” became a holiday staple?
Image: Photo: Columbia Records Music Features Mariah Carey
In The New Christmas Canon, The A.V. Club looks beyond Rudolph’s nose and Zuzu’s petals to highlight entertainment from the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s that has become a seasonal staple—or deserves to.
Mariah Carey had a banner year in 1994. Her third studio album, 1993’s Music Box, had grown into a blockbuster hit, thanks to the chart success of songs such as the Harry Nilsson cover “Without You” and the inspirational “Hero.” Billboard named Carey the top female pop singles artist of 1994—she had five singles chart in the Hot 100—and the top female pop artist overall, as measured by combined albums and singles activity. Still, even being on a commercial hot streak didn’t guarantee that her 1994 Christmas album, Merry Christmas, which spawned “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” was going to find an audience.
All I want for Christmas is a holiday radio hit
“Twenty years ago, Christmas music and Christmas albums by artists weren’t the big deal that they are today,” Walter Afanasieff, one of Carey’s frequent songwriting and producing collaborators during the ’90s, told Billboard in 2014. “Back then, you didn’t have a lot of artists with Christmas albums. It wasn’t a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs. So we were going to release it as kind of an everyday, ‘Hey, you know, we’re putting out a Christmas album. No big deal.’”
Bucking this trend, Merry Christmas sold briskly in the U.S. After rising to No. 3 on the Billboard Top 200, the record was certified triple platinum by the RIAA by the end of 1994. “All I Want For Christmas Is You” performed a bit slower out of the gate: Because there was no commercially released single for the song, it only appeared on Billboard’s airplay charts. In the December 24, 1994 issue of Billboard, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” debuted at No. 31 on the Hot Adult Contemporary chart and at No. 38 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart. The song eventually peaked at No. 6 and No. 12, respectively, in early 1995.
In the U.K., the song fared far better, lodging itself near the top of the singles chart, while in Japan, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was the best-selling foreign single of 1994. These successes foreshadowed the song’s explosion in U.S. popularity: The song perennially tops Billboard’s Holiday 100 chart, which measures sales, airplay, and streaming, and eventually peaked at No. 21 on the regular Billboard Hot 100 in 2013. It’s also a radio staple: During the 2014 holiday season, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was the most-played song on Adult Top 40 radio stations monitored by Nielsen BDSradio, earning 751 spins more than its closest competitor, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.” On Mainstream Top 40 stations, the song trailed only Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” for dominance.
Capturing that traditional, retro holiday sound
Afanasieff—who co-wrote, produced, and performed and programmed the music on the track—never expected the song to become a hit, he told Billboard. “To think of it as a single that’s going to No. 1, that’s going to drive an album… we didn’t have an inkling of that. That’s not what the time was. That’s what made it such a modern phenomenon: Because it’s not like ‘White Christmas’ or ‘Jingle Bells’—the song doesn’t have any of those traditional elements, but it became a huge pop hit.”
Carey’s playful, lively vocal performance certainly had much to do with this success. Her Broadway-caliber emoting and theatricality was a breath of fresh air during a year when serious power ballads dominated the pop charts. But as Afanasieff recalled to Business Insider in 2013, he wasn’t thrilled with her initial approach: “My first reaction was, ‘That sounds like someone doing voice scales… Are you sure that’s what you want?’” The pair—who had collaborated extensively on Music Box and Carey’s 1991 album, Emotions—eventually landed on the same wavelength, however. “She would sing a melody and I would do a chord change,” he said. “It was almost like a game of ping-pong, back and forth, until we had it.”
Yet musically, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is hard to pin down as being from a specific era, which helps its enduring appeal. The song begins with a sparkling bit of percussion that resembles an antique music box or a whimsical snow globe. As it progresses, other seasonal percussive signifiers emerge: celebratory church-like bells, cheerful sleigh bells, and an underlying rhythmic beat that sounds like the loping pace of a horse or reindeer. These sounds echo religious and secular musical touchstones, without veering blatantly too much in either direction, and give the song an upbeat, joyous tone.
As Carey noted in a 1994 video interview, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was meant to be “fun,” she says. “It’s very traditional, old-fashioned Christmas. It’s very retro, kind of ’60s.” In other interviews, Afanasieff name-checked Phil Spector, whose A Christmas Gift For You LP is considered classic. It’s an apt influence: A lush bed of keyboards, reminiscent of a small-scale Wall Of Sound, cushions the song’s cheery rhythms, while a soulful vocal chorus adds robust oohs, tension-creating counter-melodies, and festive harmonies. Most notably, however, the song’s jaunty piano chords and melody keep the song merrily bouncing along.
“I started playing some rock ’n’ roll piano and started boogie woogie-ing my left hand,” Afanasieff recalled to Billboard about the song’s genesis. “And that inspired Mariah to come up with the melodic [Sings.] ‘I don’t want a lot for Christmas.’ And then we started singing and playing around with this rock ’n’ roll boogie song, which immediately came out to be the nucleus of what would end up being ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You.’”
An arrangement simple enough to be infectious
While the music sounds busy, its arrangement is actually “very simple,” he said in a 2014 ASCAP interview. “In fact, so simple that, at the time, I thought it was overly simple, and I really didn’t like it. Because music people know [Sings the intro’s stair-step notes.] it’s almost a practice interval.” Still, merging these rudimentary melodies and parts with a familiar-sounding, rock ’n’ roll foundation was a winning formula, especially in terms of crafting a song that sticks: “Keeping that tradition—and then the oversimplified melody—I guess because it was that, made it so easily palatable for the whole world to go, ‘Oh. Yeah, I can’t get that out of my head.’”
Although the song itself is relatively uncomplicated, it’s a mistake to consider “All I Want For Christmas Is You” thematically slight. The song isn’t emotionally attached to common holiday traditions: Stockings hung on the mantel, Santa bringing toys, reindeer, mistletoe, and even snow all pale in comparison to the “you” the song’s main character longs to see. “Going into an original Christmas song, you gotta be really, really smart to know all the landmines you’re going to be stepping on,” Afanasieff said in the ASCAP interview. “If a smart writer writes a song—and just boldly goes into the stereotype of jingle, and mistle[toe], frosty and Rudolph and Santa—ugh, God, it just becomes a mess.” Here these festive signifiers are a mere backdrop for the song’s more universal premise: pining after someone who’s far away, and wishing they were there with you.
“A lot of people can relate to the sentiment of being away from someone you love during the holidays and what a drag it can be,” Dikembe guitarist Ryan Willems, whose band did a slower, downtrodden version of the song in 2013, tells The A.V. Club. “What the original did that was brilliant was it dressed those sentiments up in one of the most palatable and joyful sounding Christmas songs of all time. As far as Christmas music goes, I think this song is more substantial and genuine than most.”
The rare, full-on Christmas love song
In this way, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” transcends its seasonal association and taps into something far deeper and more pervasive, something people struggle with year-round. While the song certainly can’t be divorced from the holiday—what with the gift-driven double entendre in the title and chorus—it’s not limited by its Christmas setting, either. Afanasieff said in the ASCAP interview, “I think people like this positive love song, because it’s interchangeable. Anybody can sing it to anybody—it’s about everybody… from father to child or mother to child or wife to husband.”
Yet such ambiguity makes “All I Want For Christmas Is You” incredibly mutable. The song can just as easily be interpreted as a melancholic song about unrequited love, especially because it’s all crescendo and no denouement: Listeners never find out if the main character actually gets her wish—much less if the person she’s confessing her love to actually feels the same way. “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is a one-sided confession of wants and desires, not a song describing or celebrating a consummated relationship. “Honestly, the lyrics, to me, come off as hopelessly sad,” Williems says. “I’ve read the critical reception section of the song’s Wikipedia page, and I can’t help but think the critics weren’t really listening. One critic seems to claim there is a ‘hint of longing,’ which might be the understatement of the century.
“If you wanted to get real bummed about it, I think the argument could be made that the song is denouncing the artificiality surrounding the spectacle of Christmas,” he continues. “Saying that you are so hung up on the negative of not being with one person on Christmas that you can’t embrace the joy of the holiday is really pretty sad, but also movingly honest for a pop Christmas song.”
The song inspired a slew of unusual, left-field covers
But the song’s thematic flexibility also makes it ripe for other, less-serious interpretations. Zebrahead bassist Ben Osmundson tells The A.V. Club that the aim of his band’s racing, pop-punk version of the song “was to have a Christmas song that we actually really liked,” he says. “Sometimes cheesy is good. At least to us.” On their 2010 EP, Ruin Christmas, the Oakland indie-garage trio Shannon And The Clams took a shambling, lighthearted approach to their “All I Want For Christmas Is You” cover, including having guitarist-vocalist Cody Blanchard sing lead. “We wanted a male voice singing it because it’s in such a high register and so feminine,” he said in an email to The A.V. Club. “It came out so scream-y and funny. We wanted people to chuckle but also to be reminded that this is simply a good pop song that they all had probably written off as dumb ’90s Top 40.”
Blanchard also found the humor in the song’s lyrics. “It’s got a good punchline thing going with each verse, where she describes in a dozen different ways each of the Christmas wishes she would trade in to spend this Christmas with her bae,” he says. “She’s telling Santa Claus that she doesn’t need any of the usual stuff; she’d rather he just bring her lover to her instead. I think it’s a relatable feeling for a lot of people, torn between friends and family and lovers, or just wishing there were some powerful being who could bring your baby to you when you’re missing him/her.”
My Chemical Romance’s punk- and metal-inflected “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” meanwhile, mines the song’s desperation. In fact, their version sounds unmoored and frantic, perhaps because the cover came about after the band wasn’t able to come home for the holidays during one of their first U.S. tours. “We weren’t depressed, but it was the first kind of wake-up call as to what touring was like,” vocalist Gerard Way said in a 2005 interview with Black Velvet magazine. “We were freezing cold in the van, and the Mariah Carey song came on the radio, and this was back when we used to carry knives and weapons and stuff, ’cause you needed to. And there was something about that song, because it would get me so excited, but it was really violently excited. I just remember swinging a knife around and freaking out because the song made me so goddamn happy. So instead of covering a classic song or instead of writing a new song, we decided to pick this ridiculous song and see what we could make of it.”
Left-field covers like these have helped “All I Want For Christmas Is You” become part of the permanent Christmas canon, because they expose an entirely different audience to the song. Strangely enough, however, there are only a few rock-based versions of the song out there besides the ones mentioned; other notable takes include a nostalgic new wave version by The Motels and an energetic, pop-rock rendition by Bowling For Soup. However, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is a favorite of mainstream pop stars; Michael Bublé, Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, Idina Menzel, Fifth Harmony, Lady Antebellum, and the cast of Glee have all tackled it.
How Mariah Carey keeps All I Want For Christmas alive
And Carey herself always keeps the song in the public eye, via high-profile performances at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting, as well as the occasional rework. She’s re-done the song with a hip-hop-tinged rhythm track and guest raps (2000’s “So So Def” remix, featuring Jermaine Dupri and Lil’ Bow Wow), electronic beats (2009’s hi-NRG “Mariah’s New Dance Mix”), an orchestral intro (2010’s “Extra Festive” mix), Jimmy Fallon and the Roots (a 2012 version on classroom instruments), and as a duet with Justin Bieber (a 2011 version on his holiday album). Wisely, Carey has also diversified how and where the song is promoted: This year, she released a children’s picture book named after the song.
In 2003, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” also appeared in a pivotal moment near the end of the movie Love, Actually. An American ex-pat named Joanna (Olivia Olson) brings the house down at the school holiday musical with her rendition of the tune, which presages David (Hugh Grant) and Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) accidentally exposing their relationship. This take on the song emphasizes the bravery built into “All I Want For Christmas Is You”: After all, there’s nothing tentative about bold proclamations such as, “I just want you here tonight / Holding on to me so tight.” At the same time, this version also highlights how “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is an aspirational song, an empowering example of someone admitting vulnerability and trying to engender a best-case scenario. The tune puts forth not only an idealized version of Christmas, but also imagines the perfect version of someone’s life.
“Thousands of original Christmas songs have been written in the last 20 years,” Afanasieff told Billboard. “It’s not like no one writes Christmas songs—everyone is trying to get a Christmas song. But for whatever reason ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ just became that song. It’s kind of something you never would have thought, and you can’t really explain why, and we feel lucky, because it was the last major song to enter that Christmas canon, and then the door slammed shut. It just closed.
“I’m sure there’s going to be another one; there has to be,” he concludes. “But it has to be the right artist at the right time, the right words and the right melody for the right cultural moment. It became our song 20 years ago, and it just keeps growing and growing.”
284 Comments
Can we ban Christmas songs from having jinglebells? They are absolutely painful, find some other way to make that shit sound Christmasy.
*Pushes reindeer off of roof and records foley for new Christmas loop*
(“Rudolph Scream” replaces “Wilhelm Scream” in movies and tv)
I see the war on Christmas has recruited another soldier to its ranks. C’mon, man, baby Jesus had tons of jingle bells in that manger.
Sleigh bells belong in only two places:1. Actual, you know, sleighs.
2. Mahler’s 4th Symphony.
Mahler’s 4th Symphony and “The Shiznit” by Snoop Doggy Dogg.
..and “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by the Stooges
If we don’t have jingle bells then how will we know that Batman smells and Robin layed an egg?
Did Joker get away or take ballet? Not sure which is the official version.
Yes.Or maybe I’m thinking of Two-Face.
Clearly, the Joker having “got away” follows from the Batmobile losing its wheel. Having the Joker take ballet, while scanning, is just a non-sequitur.
I’m happy just to ban both Christmas songs and Christmas. Sick of it. It’s been going on FOREVER and it’s only December 7th.KILL ME!
My local grocery store took down the Halloween candy and put up the Christmas candy the next day. Unbelievable.
Did his insurance claim cover the damage when you burnt it down?
Wish granted!
But how else are we supposed to know it’s a Christmas song?
Vince Guaraldi managed, even with instrumental tunes.
Did he? I like his stuff, but they are pretty much the same tone in all of the specials regardless of holiday. They just seem bittersweet, which is pretty much the sentiment of Peanuts in general.
I see your point, but I think it works here. Jingle bells are an effective spin on the bouncy-1960s girl group vibe this song thrives on.The problem is when people insert jingle bells into songs that don’t aspire to bounciness.
“Baby Got Back” bounced quite fine without Sir Mix-a-Lot having shake sleigh bells at us.
I think my main problem with them is that in the past few decades, it seems that everyone uses them to indicate “Hey! This is a Christmas song!” rather than actually using the feel of the music to do that. It’s like when film directors use dramatic music to tell you how to feel about a scene instead of, you know, good storytelling.
How many clicked here to see if Scott Tobias had returned?
Great article. I think it’s one of those songs where the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. I always felt it was the spiritual sister to Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
That’s a very apt comparison. And thank you for reminding me how much I like that Darlene Love song.
Am I wrong in thinking that Mariah’s album also included a cover of that song? I’m almost positive that I’ve heard it on the radio before.
Hey, you’re right! I’ve never actually heard the entire album, though I might check it out now.
Yep! I’ve probably heard it more this year in stores than I have All I Want For Christmas is You, actually. It’s not bad!
Carey definitely covered “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, and its decent, but when I hear it there always seems to be something missing that I just can’t put my finger on. Maybe its just that I think the original is so damn great (’cause it is!), but the cover just seems a little flat to me.
I don’t really care for Christmas, I hate 90% of all Christmas songs, and I don’t really like Mariah Carey, but I fucking love this song. I read an article last year about how complex this song is, in terms of the chords that explains how the song managed to feel “classic” right out of the gate (http://www.slate.com/articl…. I’m also nuts about Phil Spector’s girl groups, so really everything about this was engineered to hook me.Semi-related, a friend of mine plays a Christmas show every year, and occasionally sneaks in raunchy lyrics to amuse himself and anybody who might happen to be paying attention. Once you hear the line in this song as “I won’t even stay up late/to suck that magic reindeer dick,” you’ll never unhear it.
I’m not a big fan of this song, or Christmas music in general, but I’m all on board with more songs entering the “Christmas canon” so November 1 – December 31 isn’t an endless loop of the same twelve songs in every store, on every radio station, at every party, etc.
Christmas music is only acceptable from noon on December 24th until 2pm on December 25th.
If I had my way…
Here’s how the transition should work Christmas day:Morning to 1:57: whatever Christmas music you have.
1:57 to 2:00: something by Bing Crosby.
2:00 to 2:03: Bing Crosby/David Bowie do “Little Drummer Boy”
2:03 to 2:07: something by David Bowie.
2:07 on: TRANSITION COMPLETE; RESUME NORMAL MUSICAL SELECTIONS.
“Something by David Bowie” is a good idea for any time of year.
Does this mean we can only have Halloween music on October 30-31?
Not that we have much Halloween music. If we had nearly as much devotion to Halloween music than we did for Christmas, then “Sounds of the Seasons” wouldn’t be on a 1-hour shuffle in October.
They NEVER play Halloween music on the radio anymore, even on Halloween. When I was a kid, I loved hearing “Monster Mash” on the radio.
It’s my favorite Valentine’s Day song!
All the monsters are holding their evil in check!Bobby “Boris” Pickett did try work his way into the Christmas canon with “Monsters’ Holiday.”
I heard the Lon Chaney Jr. recitation version for the first time this year, and it’s now permanently on both my Halloween & Xmas playlists.
Somebody inevitably plays “Ghostbusters” on Halloween, which is like the radio jackpot on October 31. Otherwise, I stick with my digital music station on my cable. Unfortunately, it seems to be limited to a selection of fewer than 50 songs, a good chunk of which suck and others of which are questionable (like the “Blade Runner” soundtrack).
I heard “Thriller” on the radio the afternoon of the 31st.
All we really need for Halloween is “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” on an endless loop.
It’s a damn shame that hasn’t been the breakout Halloween novelty song hit of the new century.
There’s two exceptions, Mr Grinch and Monster Mash are appropriate any time of the year
The latter is especially true on Valentine’s Day.
Mr Grinch is grrrrrrrrrrrrr-eat!
Any time of the year is a good time for GWAR. the Misfits, or Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
I don’t hear enough Christmas in Hollis on the radio. That’s racist! Not playing Run DMC is a microaggression yo!
It’s Christmas time in Hollis Queens and mamas cooking chicken and collard greensIt’s not Christmas if I don’t hear this song at least once
It’s on my Christmas mix. Love that song.
I agree with the need for newness in the canon. Much like Christmas movies, it seems like every year there’s a few new Christmas CD’s, and almost nothing ever sticks (usually for good reason, but still).Kelly Clarkson’s Christmas album from a couple years back had some good originals that I’ve heard a few times on the radio. But I honestly can’t think of any other new, non-cover Christmas songs from the last several years that have gotten traction.
So true. I started putting together a Christmas playlist on Spotify only so that I could have some control over the family holiday music instead of someone inevitably just turning it to a Christmas radio station, or putting the Mannheim Steamroller cds on repeat, and it really is sad that there’s so few original Christmas tunes that stick.I’ll have to check out Kelly Clarkson’s, thanks for the suggestion! I was also just made hip to Sharon Jones having a Christmas album released recently – haven’t heard it yet so I don’t know if it has any originals, but worth a shot.One of the few originals from the past few years that I do really like (even though it’s depressing kind of) is Diamond Rugs’ “Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant”. It’s essentially a John McCauley of Deer Tick solo track, but for some strange reason really resonates with me.
Mannheim Steamroller (shudder)…I don’t remember where I heard the joke (leaning towards an MST3K riff) that called them Mannheim Sleeproller. It stuck with me.
My father in law loves the Steamroller!I try to be tolerant of other people’s musical preferences, but I can’t make it more than ten minutes without sneaking to the stereo to turn it down or off when he puts it on.
Jesus fucking Christ I don’t think I could agree more. They’re the worst thing to happen to to Christmas music.
I heard a cover of “Christmas” by The Who in a store the other day — a strange song to be nestled in between “White Christmas” and “Silver Bells”
That’s pretty awesome.
Paul McCartney fought for this, and we rejected him.
These might be of some help:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsjr5KYtrL2TuDPWb10SUlNqbw7QkOgrz
If Lil Bow Wow and Justin Bieber couldn’t kill this song, it’s definitely here for the long haul.
I remember that for the longest time, I swore this was a remake. It sounds so much like Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Even the sentiment is essentially the same.
I thought it was a remake until I read this article.And speaking of sounding similar I saw Jessica Simpson a few years ago in the Macy’s parade singing “My Only Wish” featuring the lyrics “My only wish for Christmas is you”. You could smell the desperation.
To be fair, that’s the sentiment in roughly half of all pop Christmas songs.
Hell, Michael Buble did a pretty good cover of it.
the backing vocals make the song. without them it’s just pretty good, but those backing vocals, that choirry echo? it makes it basically perfect.i mean don’t get me wrong, the song wouldn’t work without carey, but the backing vocals give it the extra push over the top
in other news, i kinda hope “get behind me, santa!” or another sufjan stevens track makes an article for this feature because if there’s a single musical artist who has worked harder to make christmas their own damn business and actually pull it off then…well, there isn’t
IF Mariah Carey had recorded this when she was drunk or stoned, it would have sounded one hell of a lot better!~Steven Guy
Reviewing Merry Christmas by Mariah Carey
It’s that classic 1960s Phil Spector reverb on the background vocals, which makes it even better.
Among those covers the version by Shannon and the Clams is by far my favorite, exactly because the garage echo actually captures the original’s big sound, despite being performed by a trio. Plus the singer’s got great energy.
I’m glad the Bieber version exists, but only for Linda Holmes’ annotations to the video: http://www.npr.org/sections…“0:55 Old Santa realizes that nobody cares about anything except shopping anymore, so he gathers some envelopes with papers inside that say “Midnight At Macy’s,” as if that’s some special big thing, and he sarcastically mugs as he presents them to people who no longer remember how to be happy about anything except spending money.”
Linda Holmes is a national treasure.
I’m a huge fan of this:”1:19 Bieber, still among the handbags, has abandoned his cart somewhere in the store for an employee to put all the stuff back. Typical. He signals “WAKE UP, SHEEPLE” in semaphore.”
How did I not know this exists, as a big fan of Linda Holmes’ writing?
Well at least it’s not recklessly creepy like “Santa Baby” or “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa” or “Santa’s Tongue”
“Baby It’s Cold Outside (so stay here while I date rape you).”
HEY, WHAT’S IN THIS DRINK!?I always thought of “Let It Snow” as the non-rapey version of “Cold Outside”.
Yes, the couple in Let it Snow seem to actually want to spend time together.I’ve always liked how Let it Snow is a celebration of contentment bordering on laziness “And since we’ve no place to go” indeed.
I’d never thought of that, but yeah they are expressing a similar sentiment in very different ways.
My favorite version is Miss Piggy trying to rape Rudolf Nureyev in a sauna on The Muppet Show: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“Baby It’s Cold Outside (so stay here while I date rape you).”
Not this shit again.THAT’S NOT WHAT THE SONG’S ABOUT!
It’s December, which means it’s time for the annual “Baby It’s Cold Outside: Rapey or No?” throwdown.My take? No. Discuss amongst yourselves.Also, if you don’t have time for this right now do not worry, we will be hashing it out several times a week for the next 23 days.
Santa’s…tongue???
At last week’s Rifftrax Live they played Weird Al’s “The Night Santa Went Crazy,” which was terrible both for the timing and the audience. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the guy two rows in front of me looked like the guy who murdered John Lennon.
Between that song and “Christmas At Ground Zero”, Al was on a real streak for sociopathic Christmas songs. Even as a little kid who relished having his albums, those songs made me extremely uncomfortable. Inappropes, Al!
Both of those songs are traditions in my family. That might say something about my father and me (my mom’s not a fan).
Any Christmas song that references Freddy Krueger is a gat damn national treasure in my mind. I mean, the red and green ugly sweater? The murder! The kids!… wait, skip that last one.Never a bad time to play that song.
Weird Al’s “Christmas at Ground Zero” deserves more attention than it gets.Just sayin’
Or “Santa’s Rigid Yule Log”.
If you mean the Madonna version, agreed.If you mean the Eartha Kitt version, pistols at dawn.
This song has been adapted into a children’s book. I need to get a review up on my website as soon as I figure out how to objectively review a book about what I consider to be one of the more grating modern Christmas songs in existence…
Is there a Festivus song in our pop culture world? There should be if not, and it should be about all the lonely, bitter souls who can barely tolerate this time of year.
It’s Reign in Blood.
Never heard of it. I’ll look for it. Thanks!
As I Rained Blows Upon Him, by Jerry Stiller.
I would nominate Sean Morey’s “Dear Santa” even though it’s explicitly a Christmas song. The sarcasm just really shines through in that one.
I’ll give it a listen. Thank you, my friend.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Lonely? Bitter? You actually want the instrumental version of “Christmastime Is Here” from A Charlie Brown Christmas.
I don’t know Kris Kristopherson had a few Christmas albums Im sure there has to be a song embedded with enough drunk bitter resentment on one of those tracks.
Judging by the clip show they played before the Seinfeld finale, that damn Green Day “Time of Your Life” song is a Festivus carol.Bitter? No, I’m not bitter. Serenity now!
New Kids on the Block had a Christmas album. That should amplify the depression. The James Brown Christmas album should be used to bring you back to sanity.
Eh, I’ll go to bat for… one-third, maybe a quarter of the songs on “Merry Merry Christmas”.(In fairness, no singer over the age of twelve can survive “Little Drummer Boy”.)
HIT ME! Tell ‘em James Brown sent you, Santa Claus, go straight to the Ghetto.
Titus Andronicus’ debut was called ‘The Airing of Grievances’ but I guess it isn’t actually a seasonal album…
Fairytale of New York?
I Believe in Father Christmas by Honeymoon Suite was definitely written by someone who wasn’t feeling very happy about it all.
Seinfeld is VASTLY overrated in general.
But it’s underrated specifically.
Screw all you Scrooges and Grinches, I like this song! And I like Christmas! W-what’s so wrong with that?
I would like the song even more without the excessive jingle bells throughout the track, but other than that it’s almost a perfect pop song, the way Motown used to produce them back in the day.
Exactly. I’m British, and as a nation we’re big on our Christmas songs, and this is one of the few that get endlessly replayed each year which could work as an actual song, removed of the Christmas trappings.Though I also like all those crappier Christmas songs too. Even Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time.
Especially “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time”! I never understood why people hate this odd thing, with its synth bleep-bloops and all. It’s almost Lynchian in its weirdness.
Because it sucks, and the fact that Paul McCartney wrote it makes it suck that much worse.
Every once in a while I hear a newer version without the bleep-bloops and I don’t like it nearly as much.
With that in mind, whoever directed the music video, which contains glowing people, giant snowglobes, and a laser-angel thing twisting around in the sky and spreading fairy dust everywhere, knew *exactly* what they were doing.
Why do people hate on Wonderful Christmas Time? I love it.
I love it too.
As I said, I’m a fan, but I can see why it gets the hate. It’s a song with a lot of repetition, and it gets played repetitively for two months of the year.
Wonderful Christmas Time is a hate crime.
Bold stances were taken. There were heroes on both sides.
I don’t know about you guys, but I also enjoy ecstatically waving a knife around to Mariah Carey songs. My Chemical Romance gets me, man.
Serious question: what the hell is he talking about having “needed to” have weapons in the past, but apparently not anymore? I don’t know anything about this band so…did they used to play in really rough bars or something?
It was so the emo kids really got them.
I assumed he meant they played shitty venues and crashed on shady couches when they were starting up and people would rob their equipment … Or he was just being a weird overly dramatic drama queen, you decide!
What, you’ve never heard of the infamous punk wars of 2005? A Simple Plan planting a bomb in Good Charlotte’s tourbus? Panic at the Disco shooting up Gerard Way’s house? None of this rings a bell?
Who can forget the tragic events of Taking Back Bloody Sunday or the Bullet for My Valentine’s Day Massacre?
There weren’t enough casualties from that war. It didn’t thin out their ranks nearly enough…
of course it was hard for anyone to see their opponent because of all the mascara they kept getting in their eyes.
so when are we getting the review of whatever the hell a very murray christmas was supposed to be
I want to here Dikembe Mutombo sing “All I Want for Xmas is You”
Just go find any audio clip of Mutombo talking and pretend that’s what he’s doing. It’s not like you can tell the difference.
I don’t particularly like much Christmas music, but I love Love, Actually, and the movie’s version of the song (with the drums mixed loudly because a main character is playing them) kind of opened up the song for me, and now I quite dig it and what it’s trying to do.
It’s the only good use of the song. (Olivia Olson has quite a nice voice.)
Denied the Christmas No. 1 spot (in the days before X Factor started hogging it nearly every year) in the UK by er…East 17.
You have to admit that East 17 was prettier.
Because people suck and they can’t be bothered to seek out good Christmas music instead of this terrible thing.
I like to think that this song is sung by a constipated Mariah and she is actually singing “All I Want For Christmas Is Poo”
I heard a cool story on NPR last week about Minnie Riperton — “Loving you is easy cause you’re beautiful…” — where I learned two neat things: 1.) She was Maya Rudolph’s mom, and 2.) those crazy high notes she hits are part of what’s called the whistle register, which is the highest range of notes that are able to be produced by the human voice.That prompted me to look up compilations of Mariah Carey’s whistle register, and it was definitely time well spent.
Maya Rudolph has inherited some pipes too, as witness her knockout singing on the Bill Murray Christmas thingie…
I knew she could sing, but I just watched that yesterday morning and yeah, that was one of the standout performances for sure.
I hope people knew she could sing before that!
I hope, you also spent some time looking up Minnie Riperton songs. ‘Cause Minnie Riperton is awesome.
And Richard Stamos still can’t hit the high F
Yeah, we know where the talent in that family went.
So you want the trigger on the “doot’n’doo?”
Showing people Mariah’s Super Bowl National Anthem is a favorite party activity of mine. It’s both impressive and tacky, just like Mariah Carey!
You know that songs about Maya right? Not talking about the Rentals either.
NEED LINKS.
If this is going to be around forever, I guess I’ll have to get used to changing the station for the rest of my life. Wait…I have Satellite Radio!
The only song that belongs in the New Christmas Canon is Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis.”
That’s always been my favorite Xmas song. That or the one about the hippo.
The new Christmas jam of the now and forever is Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree.” CRANK IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I hate this song but it’s become part of Christmas Canon, and at some point we have to accept that Christmas is going to be more than Burl Ives and Bing Crosby (and Jose Felicianos) even though that’s categorically wrong.What weirds me out is how I hear Smashing Pumpkins’ “Christmastime” in public sometimes. I’m a huge fan, but really? That made the cut?As an aside, any and all Christmas songs about makin’ some Christmas bacon are gross and wrong. It’s music to shop by, music to decorate by, Christmas to drive down twinkling snowlit streets by. Don’t get under the mistletoe and know each other better. Don’t try to boink Santa. Don’t flirt over adult beverages while exploring sexual tension. Goddamn. At least it makes Community’s vicious takedown of the sub-sub-genre more enjoyable.
It’s hard to overstate what a monster hit this song was in Japan. I was shopping in a Japanese grocery store and in the little gift shop there was some commercial playing on a loop that had some boy band singing in Japanese lyrics over the melody. In JULY.
I have yet to meet a Japanese English teacher who doesn’t absolutely love that song and/or “Last Christmas” by Wham. Every December without fail, at least one of the JTEs I work with tries in vain to get the junior high kids to sing along to one or both of those songs in class.
musically, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is hard to pin down as being from a specific era…is certainly one way of saying it’s a blatant pastiche of a 60’s Phil Spector “wall of sound” girl group number. And as the article says, the song’s writer wasn’t trying to hide this, so why beat around the bush?
The DJ crush played this several times on her show last Christmas (before I brought her a tarte provencale on the weirdest, most pleasantly awkward Christmas Day ever). I never expected to feel nostalgia for this song, but I do now. What a world.
Man, I’d forgotten how hot air-brushed baby Mariah was.
Seriously.
I know she’s not the darkest-skinned sister out there, but this is ridiculous.
It’s weird how much of the traditional christmas canon was written in the span of maybe two decades, and then left almost untouched for the next five.
This more or less explains it: https://xkcd.com/988/
These are all the classics I love listening to.Some Nat King Cole…the Rat Pack guys…the Motown gang.I love all this old stuff…and actually don’t even care for Christmas
There are some great Shoutcast stations out there that play these kinds of classics and lots more. I particularly like 181.Fm (their Christmas Traditional Classics station, as they have many others).
Wow, that’s well-spotted.
The UK has a fairly extensive 70s/80s cheesy Christmas pop canon, but that also seemed to die off around 1990 for no obvious reason.
I’m by no means a Mariah Carey fan, but I unabashedly love this song.
Edit: if you can’t say anything nice…
I totally love this song and get a big stupid grin on my face the first time I hear it each Christmas.It doesn’t surprise me that it was super popular in Japan, where Christmas is largely a romantic date holiday.
Can we also discuss “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and why the new version is a fucking abomination?
There’s a new version?Nevermind, I don’t even want to know.
It changes the most epic line of the song. Totally unacceptable.
They got rid of “Thank God tonight it’s them instead of you!”?
You better fucking believe it. Now it’s “reaching out and touching yoooou” or some dumb shit.
I sincerely do miss the admission by the creators that their audience consisted of self-satisfied assholes who could at best be convinced to make a trivial gesture for those enduring real suffering.And I say this as a self-satisfied asshole.
That’s not good but I guess it’s better. Who’s doing the touching though?
Every Christmas Eve, as we sit down for dinner, my family pulls out a photograph of a starving African child and sincerely thanks God that we have food and that kid doesn’t.
You should also thank God for whoever trekked over to Africa and stole your meal off his plate. Because obviously these things are zero-sum.
We write letters to the Archbishop of Addis Ababa asking if he knows it’s Christmas.
That’s a shame – that line is a great moment of weapons-grade snark in an otherwise painfully earnest song.
The part where Sting (I think) sings about himself?
I always thought it was a bit weird that the line Sting enters on was ‘the bitter sting of tears’
Oh, after hearing it enough times I assumed it was deliberate. I don’t know if it was his choice or the producer’s or if everyone got drunk before the song and decided it’d be a great gag. It’s painful when I hear it, though—kids are starving, but here’s Sting plugging himself Eminem style.
Bono* sings that .But having Sting sing about the bitter Sting would have been funny.
IIRC there was an article about the song on the AVC a couple of years ago, and a truly baffling number of people seemed to regard that line as some sort of shockingly crass “Ha, sucks to be you, starving people!”. As though variants of “be grateful for what you’ve got because some people have things a lot worse” weren’t an incredibly common (and, you know, generally intended to provoke humility rather than self-satisfaction) thing to hear.
The implication was it’s a binary situation, and fuck you for being the ones who have something. It was misplaced guilt at its worst.
It’s always been a terrible song. The only version I like is the one from Live Aid. It’s a mess of a performance that seems like it wasn’t very rehearsed but it’s still pretty incredible to watch so many talented people on one stage and an entire stadium of people loudly chanting “Feed the world”. But aside from that, I’ve never enjoyed that song. The trend of the multi-artist charity single has thankfully died out in the US but there seems to always be one in the UK and it’s almost always terrible, even if it’s a cover of a good song (which it usually is).
Do They Know It’s Halloween puts Do They Know It’s Christmas to shame.
Quote from the article: “Anybody can sing it to anybody…” Yeah, except that this song is incredibly hard to sing correctly. Crazy sharps and flats all over the place. Most people sing the title okay and muck up the rest.
The same craft for songwriting can be found on all of Carey’s albums.
The last Christmas classic, All I want for Christmas is You
I’m so so sorry for this, but efff you!
It is the only original modern song that still gets regular airplay around the holidays. It’s crazy that no one has written anything new that has become part of the Christmas canon the way this song has.
What about “Last Christmas” by Wham?
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” is more recent. For the record I like “Last Christmas” by Wham.
Kelly Clarkson’s “Under the Tree” should have been a bigger hit, as well as Michael Buble’s “Cold December Night”. Both are fun, romantic, and Christmas from a Universal point of view of longing.
man , I know I’m responding to 6 year old posts but I’d argue , this :
Is she for real? I do not listen to Mariah’s version and think “retro 60s” at all. I realize someone along the line thought it was some sort of nod to the Ronettes’ “Sleigh Ride” but I hear that as many times a day as I do Mariah and I don’t see how the comparison can be made. Unless you’re only comparing it because they tossed in some jingle bells, it’s still as 90s bubblegum pop as you can get. And don’t get me wrong, the song isn’t bad, but I get tired of all the stations making this the “go-to” song for their Christmas playlist. I must hear it at least 10 times a day and it makes me want to stick a pencil in my ears. It ranks right up there with Wham’s “Last Christmas” (and every other singer that had to cover it), Madonna’s tarted up version of “Santa Baby” and Barbara Streisand’s “Jingle Bells.” I swear to God that woman had to be hitting “the snow” right before she recorded that.
I don’t like this song, but I worked in retail for years, so I heard it at least seven or eight times per day for thirty days. If you want a truly annoying scream-along Christmas song, try “All Alone on Christmas”: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
It’s definitely one of the better “modern” Christmas songs out there. I think its just…good.I usually stick with the classics. Though, since this one is over 20 years old now, I guess it qualifies as a classic too?
Google Play gave this album away for free around Black Friday this year.
Has nobody yet pointed out that Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” was itself a cover of a Badfinger song?
Well, first of all, of course Harry Nilsson didn’t write “Without You”. Second of all, this song won’t be around forever. Eventually the Earth will be swallowed by the sun and the universe will disintegrate.
Nope, it’ll keep going. The people in heaven who love it will hear it in perpetuity. So will the people in hell who hate it. Folks in Purgatory will get a muzak version.
Kidz Bop live recording.
That’s What I Call Christmas Music Volume LI
yeah well that’s just, like, your opinion man
You do have a point. I mean, theorize and do all the math you want but it’s still the naturalistic fallacy at play – it’s never happened that we know of so to say it will happen lacks foundational credibility.
Oh god that is such a relief. All I want is for human civilization to end so this song will as well🎶
Every ’70s song was written by either Nilsson or John Denver. Everyone knows that.
Martine McCutcheon (Natalie from Love Actually) aka @martineofficial does a great White Christmas! https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Comment deleted due to handsome users excess levels of wit and charm.
Still waiting for the Hear This on “Fairytale of New York”
Here’s another pop-rock version: http://music.thegenuinefake…
A slowed-down version: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And one in which you can COME ON AND SLAM. AND WELCOME TO THE JAM: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“In the U.K., the song fared far better, lodging itself near the top of the singles chart…”That’s a very long winded way to say ‘it reached No 2’.Anyway naysayers be damned I love this song, it’s a big favourite in UK, it’s probably the last decent new Christmas classic.
I do not appreciate the unavoidable Heineken ad that played over this article. Worse, when it was finished, I couldn’t find out how to clear it. I ended up having to refresh the page. If you must have ads, do not make them so obtrusive and difficult to deal with. It’s extremely aggravating!
I despise this song because it reminds me of the most depressing Christmas ever.
One of the perks of writing a Christmas standard? No matter how much your music career declines, you always become relevant again at this time of the year. Look at Mariah Carey or Michael Buble.
It was a hit because it sounded like it came from Phil Spector’s Christmas album.There, I just saved you several hundred words. ‘welcome.
My youngest son is all over this song this year and we have to listen to it at least once a day. But I associate it more with his older brother who was due to be born around Christmas. All I DID want for Christmas was him, but he didn’t show up until January 10th.Believe me, my infant son received a strongly worded letter from me expressing my disappointment in his tardiness.
As a Christmas Eve Baby, I warned my sister about having hers before or after Christmas. Now my nephew is stuck in the No Man’s Land of December 28th. Poor kid.
No wonder she is the best selling female singer, songwriter and producer of all time!!! WORLDWIDE!! The song is currently #14 on iTunes WORLDWIDE!
I’m not a fan of Carrey or Christmas albums but I really like that album.
This song is an abomination, but it’s a masterpiece compared to Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”.
Yeah. Wonderful Christmastime is probably the worst of the worst.
I love Christmas music-but I find this to be a terribly overrated song. Perhaps because I find Carey to be overrated herself.
in Japan, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was the best-selling foreign single of 1994.And now, I finally realize why sticking the Mariah Carey Christmas album in the PlayStation got you a unique Santa-themed hare monster named, appropriately, “Santa” in Monster Rancher. Never could figure out as a teen why an American holiday CD would have a creature literally made for it in a Japanese video game. (I didn’t own a lot of CD’s, and the Internet wasn’t what it is now, so I didn’t get to do much album-testing.)
Good piece! Pretty much nails all the reasons for its never-ending appeal. I’ll just add that the song isn’t popular in spite of its deceptively simple melody but because of it.That practice scale-like melody and relatively un-dynamic range make it very easy to SING ALONG with. There’s just enough range to be insanely catchy, but not enough to prevent average Joes like me from joining in, drunk or sober.Every time it comes on, it becomes a mini-event. If you like Christmas merriment at all, you just have to sing along for at least a little bit.
’90s Mariah Carey was pretty amazing. Watching her sing “Joy To the World” live at St. John the Divine almost makes me want to be religious.http://www.dailymotion.com/…
This is one proof that MARIAH CAREY’s Music can stand the test of time
The moment I heard this song, I knew it was destined to become a Christmas standard. If I could have bought stock or futures in it, I would be richer than the Sultan of Brunei today.Ill definitely have to check out some of these alternate versions, though. I never considered before how open-ended the lyrics really are.
Michael Buble’s version is quite lovely and melancholy.
Mutombo?
It’ll be around forever because it is a Christmas song and it was a hit for a recognizable star. Many a shitty Christmas tune falls in that category. It’s why I hear McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime over-and-over every winter.
Great feature. I’m blogging about 21st century Christmas music this month – I won’t bore you with a link because this is way better – and I loved the bit on “landmines” in Christmas music. I just listened to Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe” for it, and it’s like a goddamn checklist: Santa, reindeer, chestnuts, even wise men.Also: Leona Lewis’ “One More Sleep” deserves your attention. It’s delightful. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
home alone + all i want for Christmas is you https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Because there’s always an audience for fucking garbage.
Because she’s Mariah fucking Carey. Duh.
It’s hard to put into words just how massive this song is in Japan. You can easily hear it 20-30 times a day in December if you go shopping in a mall or arcade and then to a karaoke bar.
I feel this article severely underestimates the importance of Love Actually. The scene in the movie revived the song for many and introduced a whole new generation to it!
Absolutely. I think this movie is really where the song became a part of the holiday season.
Badfinger originally did “Without You” not Harry Nilsson.
who co-wrote, produced, and performed and programmed the music on the track—That word programmed says so much. Christmas songs should be organic and alive. This song sounds as if a diva got caught in a jukebox with a drum machine. No thanks.
“everyone moves like dancing lasagna and there doesn’t seem to be rhyme nor reason to the movement patterns”- Robert Jokeseph 12/7/15
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You mean 10 minutes ago?
wait, was that the joke?
You suck, McBain!
Maybe you all are homosexuals!
I first chuckled at this, but the more I think about it the more I’m pretty sure I did too.
Ha, I was around 15 when this one came out.(Translation: same here)
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thank you, and followup: why didn’t this show up via search? why is the search basically borderline useless for anything (especially tv club pages)
AV Club’s search is unusually, profoundly terrible. One gets much, much better results simply going to google and putting avclub in front of what you want.
I ended up thinking the Onion article “Website’s Built-In Search Engine Just Pathetic” was probably about their own sister site
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I know “adaption” games have always struggled with “being their own thing” versus “being true to the story.” I gotta ask what the in-game equivalent of “an old man hitting Joe Pesci with a shovel” is.
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Something something David Cameron…
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Wait, they made a Home Alone game? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since they made games of everything back then—but was it like the NES Friday the 13th? Did you just spend hours running around the house evading Joe Pesci?
yes, in fact
the “some reason” is that it’s fucking terrifying and weird as hell. everyone moves like dancing lasagna and there doesn’t seem to be rhyme nor reason to the movement patterns, let alone the traps. that plus the fact that they are relentlessly chasing you resi 3 style doesn’t make for a fun put-your-hands-to-your-mouth “oh no” but the kind of “oh no” you quietly whisper as you bleed out in the cold
I know nothing about this game but I’m upvoting you for “everyone moves like dancing lasagna”.
Agreed. I’m planning on stealing that line the next time I drunkenly freestyle rap.
everyone moves like dancing lasagna
they haunt ya, get caught with traps on the lawn, yeah
it’s snowing
oh no-ing
the music’s abysmal
it sounds like a casio played by a criminal
Fair enough. Everyone moves like dancing lasagna/ sorry about your girl son, I just put it on her/a Christmas Story/ it’s a major award/ you’ll put your eye out,with a Thundercats sword/the Bumpus hounds devoured our turkey/ look into a crystal ball, the future’s murky/ Merry Christmas bitches, top that jerky!
Sean Baby himself couldn’t have reviewed this game better!
I can’t hear sleigh bells without thinking DJ Quik’s “Jus Lyke Compton.”
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
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I had to look it up but yes, that’s the one.
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Fucking Roy. What was the appeal of US Acres again?
The different interpretations are funny. I always took it as “I don’t need presents or anything, just time spent with you”. But I can also see how others interpret it. I guess it’s just what kind of world view you have and/or your tolerance for Christmas season.
There are only two acceptable genres of Christmas music: (1) old, scary religious songs with ominous chord progressions and (2) songs that could be sung by a staggeringly drunk Dean Martin. Definitely nothing from after 1966. That’s hippie shit.
I still have my fingers crossed that Rage Against the Machine secretly recorded a Christmas album.
I much prefer this Slightly NSFW language .
Side note: there’s this really weird culture difference that most US Christmas/holiday songs tend to come from the 1940s-50s ,whereas in the UK and Ireland they come from the 70s and 80s .Whether its a boomer/Gen X thing I dont know , but its an odd difference.
It’s not a good song. And made all the worse by the fact that it is summoned from its crypt by the words “Alexa, play traditional Christmas songs” for some hellish reason. I’ve switched to “Alexa, play 1950’s Christmas” – which sadly cuts out Slade and Wham, but at least spares us whatever Bieber’s festive atrocity is called.
eventually peaked at No. 21 on the regular Billboard Hot 100 in 2013I guess this is an old article being re-published? The song hit number 1 back in 2019.
It’s the most uplifting pop Christmas song of the 21st century.
4) 5 octaves (that means she can sing her fine ass off)
3) Holiday body-con dresses (sorry Mrs. Clause, Christmas has booty now)
2) Took a bland, dower song and made it fun.
1) Most important of all, White people like the song.
Christmas is saved!
Now go buy lots of shit.
I think it’s relatively simple (thanks for the in depth article here): the song is really good and evergreen, it was popular in the UK enough for it to be the Love, Actually centerpiece, and the success of Love, Actually boosted it into a stratosphere from which it’s never come down. I sincerely don’t think it would be as everpresent without that movie.
Much prefer the Twisted Sister version,
For reasons that I cannot explain, I hate this song. I did enjoy the “All I Want for Christmas is Fruit” from the Clüsterfünke Christmas, so I have that going for me.
I have been adamantly pushing ‘Text Me Merry Christmas” by Straight No Chaser and Kristen Bell for the past few years as a modern classic Christmas song, it’s so silly and fun! And I can always do with more a capella holiday songs