History is strange, and the history of the Billboard charts is even stranger. Today, a song released 31 years ago returns to #1 on the Hot 100, tying the all-time record for most weeks atop the chart.
That song, of course, is Mariah Carey’s modern standard “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which has perennially returned to #1 during the holiday season every year since first reaching the summit in 2019. After climbing to #5 last week, the song has once again reached the top, Billboard reports. This marks its 19th week at #1, matching the record held by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”
Upon its release, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” did not even appear on the Hot 100 due to Billboard rules prohibiting songs that had not been officially released as singles. It earned enough radio play to reach #12 on the Radio Songs chart, but that was that. Then, two decades later, streaming came along.
Technically, Billboard began factoring track streams into its charts in 2007 and YouTube plays in 2013. But it wasn’t until the late 2010s, as the format took over the music industry, that Carey’s Christmas classic began to dominate the charts each December. As more and more people adopted services like Spotify and Apple Music — and those services included “All I Want For Christmas Is You” in their holiday playlists, in addition to people manually playing it — the track began to chart higher and higher each year. In 2017, it cracked the top 10 for the first time, and in 2019 it finally reached the top of the chart, becoming Carey’s 19th #1 hit. (Yes, it’s her 19th #1, and it’s spending its 19th week at #1 this week.)
Since then, it’s become the norm for “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to spend multiple weeks on top throughout December and into early January. In 2023, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” briefly interrupted Carey’s reign, but she’s since regained her place atop the Christmas hierarchy. And assuming things proceed as usual, next week “All I Want For Christmas Is You” will break the record for most weeks at #1.
Barring some unforeseen cultural development (or Billboard rule change), it’s easy to imagine Carey’s song continuing to rack up weeks at #1 for years to come, building up a record that will be nearly impossible to replicate and adding to that record every year. Assuming she gets up to, like, 30 weeks, I’m not sure I’d even want another song to spend enough weeks on top to catch her. But given the depressingly low amount of turnover near the top of the charts these days, it’s not inconceivable that some Taylor Swift or Morgan Wallen track could sit at #1 for half a year. The race for chart records should be fun, but this feels… kind of bleak? Anyway, season’s greetings, and congratulations to the Queen of Christmas Mariah Carey.
