What’s Christmas without a classic Christmas tune? Mariah Carey’s 1994 holiday song “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became the highest-charting yuletide hit in 60 years on the Billboard Hot 100, as it rose from No. 7 to No. 6 (on the chart dated Dec. 22).
Last year, the song made it to the Top 10 for the first time, landing at No. 9. Carey’s song has now bested Kenny G and New Kids on the Block’s Christmas tracks as the highest-charting holiday song in the Hot 100’s history behind ‘The Chipmunk Song.’
“The Chipmunk Song,” by David Seville and The Chipmunks, remains the only single to have hit No. 1 for four weeks beginning Dec. 22, 1958.
“All I Want for Christmas” was also streamed on Spotify a total of 10,819,009 times on Christmas Eve, according to the company’s data.
Carey co-wrote and co-produced “All I Want for Christmas Is You” with Walter Afanasieff.
In 2014, upon the song’s 20th anniversary, Afanasieff told Billboard, “To me, it’s kind of a cosmic occurrence that happens once every five billion years. Thousands of original Christmas songs have been written in the last 20 years. 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.”
By: Maytinee Kramer
