Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas is You” has been the soundtrack of the holiday season for nearly 30 years. Why has this song become a rare modern Christmas hit?
(You might want to put your headphones on)
A familiar jingle
The song begins with a Christmas-y chime. It's the sound of a celesta — an instrument featured in Tchaikovsky's Christmas classic “The Nutcracker.” Carey’s hit also uses the sleigh bell, which became associated with the holiday season some time after James Lord Pierpont penned “Jingle Bells” in the 1850s.
Nostalgic harmonies
Six chords heard in Carey's song create sounds we often associate with Christmas, according to composer Vivek Maddala.
“This kind of harmony is atypical in modern pop music but was common in previous eras,” said Maddala.
These harmonic patterns invoke a “music vocabulary” shared with American jazz standards of the early 20th century, an era when many classic Christmas songs were written.
Maximalist production
Progress a few more seconds into the song, and you’re met with what co-writer Walter Afanasieff called a “wall of sound.” Plucky piano chords and a gospel background choir create an upbeat style that is reminiscent of popular music from the 1950s and 1960s, when music production technology had advanced and writers took a more maximalist approach.
R&B vocal ad libs
Lastly, the bridge of “All I Want for Christmas is You” nods to its contemporaries: 1990s pop music, when the genre began marrying elements of hip hop and R&B. Carey’s vocal riffs and ad-libs are very characteristic of this time, when chart-toppers were often filled with vocal acrobatics in this style.
“All I Want for Christmas is You” has earned a consistent spot at the top of the U.S. Billboard Holiday 100 since the chart’s inception in 2011. But a look at what other songs appear in the top 40 here show its success is an anomaly.
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Carey’s cover of Darlene Love’s Christmas classic and cited inspiration for “All I Want for Christmas is You,” also makes an appearance.
“All I Want for Christmas is You”
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
Other artists have come out with original Christmas music, too. “Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber began its run head-to-head with Carey’s classic, but has fallen down the chart in recent years.
“Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber
Other artists have come out with original Christmas music, too. Their popularity has just been more variable:
“Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber
“Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande
“Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson
Meanwhile, songs written decades ago are the most consistent in the top 10. Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has even overtaken Carey’s hit for the number one slot over the past two weeks:
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee
“The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole
“Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms
“A Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives
“Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano
Michael Buble, known for his crooning voice and affinity for 20th century jazz standards, appears as the solo artist on seven songs cracking the top 40 of the chart. All of them are covers.
“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
“All I Want for Christmas is You”
“Holly Jolly Christmas”
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
“Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”
“Santa Buddy”
The Holiday 100, a Billboard chart begun in 2011, is quite different from other charts. The same songs chart year after year, reliably and cyclically, and many of the songs that do chart are covers.
A look at the songs that have charted consistently for ten weeks or more on the Holiday 100 shows most of them were written many decades, if not centuries, ago.
Eighteen songs that charted heavily in the last decade were written before 1930. The oldest, “Joy to the World,” was written in 1719 and covered by Nat King Cole in 1960.
If audiences respond to nostalgia during the holiday season, it only makes sense for artists to cover songs from a century or two ago. Take, for example, “O Holy Night,” a Christmas staple based on a religious French poem from the 1840s, whose covers by Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Josh Groban have all charted in the past decade.
Many of the heavily charting holiday songs we identified were written in the 1930s and 1940s, an era that also produced many American jazz standards. And of the 41 tracks from these decades, 33 were covers, meaning newer artists covered songs, sometimes from more than half a century prior, and still charted.
Christmas songs of the era evoked the sound of regular pop music of that time – jazzy, croony, and often a bit melancholy. Think: “White Christmas,” a slow song with shifting melodies that immediately sounds like Christmas.
The era of the 1950 and 1960s is the most represented among holiday songs that charted in the last decade, with 44 total tracks.
While still nostalgic, this era’s sound is generally more upbeat than that of the 1930s and 1940s. There were bigger bands, high production values with backup singers, and an infusion of the gospel genre. Think: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
Only 14 heavily charting songs were written in the 1970s and 1980s, the most popular being Wham!'s “Last Christmas.”
While some of the songs from these decades might be considered classics today, and do still chart, there are notably fewer than from previous eras.
Only 25 songs that charted consistently were written after 1990 (more than three decades ago at this point.) “All I Want for Christmas is You” stands out, but “Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson and “Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande have both consistently charted in recent years.
Could these songs become enduring Christmas classics? Time will tell, since it seems we want our holiday songs steeped in nostalgia.
Note
Data is current as of December 18, 2023.
Sources
Audio previews from Spotify API
Edited by
Feilding Cage and Rosalba O'Brien