This week marked a major milestone on the Billboard charts: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” topped the Hot 100 for the first time in the song’s history, 65 years after its release. In its long, slow ascent to the top, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has broken several records: its six-decade journey is the longest trip to No. 1 for any song in history, and the climb makes Lee, at 78, the oldest artist to ever have a Hot 100 chart-topper. That she would finally break through in 2023 isn’t an accident: Lee has been pushing her beloved tune hard through her newly created TikTok account, and in November, a video of her discussing the genesis of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” with fellow legends Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood racked up 1.1 million views. Lee wanted this, and Christmas music fans clearly wanted her to have it.
Lee’s long, long overdue achievement, however, would appear to be the loss of one Mariah Carey, whose inevitable-as-death-and-taxes “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has now been usurped from the Hot 100 summit by another Christmas song for the first time since it reached the top in December 2019. Much like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” it took some patience before Carey’s 1994 single hit No. 1—25 years, only second to Lee in terms of sleeper chart-toppers.
But Carey needn’t sweat Lee’s (much-deserved) success. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is very likely to become the biggest song in music history, but to get there, it’ll take the one thing Carey is loath to acknowledge: time.
Currently, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has logged 12 total weeks at No. 1, by far the most among Christmas-themed tracks. Before Lee joined the short list, the only other holiday tune that had ever led the Hot 100 was “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” an irritating novelty from the cartoon band Alvin and the Chipmunks, which hit the top all the way back in 1958. Another Christmas song wouldn’t join it for another 61 years. Just as Home Alone gave Lee a bump in the cultural consciousness, the slow-drip ascent of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was fueled by its prominent placement in 2003’s Love Actually, a star-studded British rom-com that’s inescapable during the holiday season. As the film’s own cult grew, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” went from a No. 83 peak in 2000 to cracking the top 20 in 2015, its popularity building each year. Carey, recognizing what a cash cow the song could be, directed a 2015 Hallmark Channel Christmas movie starring Lacey Chabert (which, in a peculiar missed opportunity at a corporate tie-in, does not feature Carey’s signature song).
Since “All I Want for Christmas Is You” officially gave Carey her 19th No. 1 single on Dec. 21, 2019—the most for any solo artist—the song has become a mainstay at the top of the charts during the month of December. That first year, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” spent three weeks at No. 1, and it returned for two more weeks during the subsequent holiday season. In fact, since first staking its claim at the top four years ago, the track has never spent fewer than two weeks at No. 1, which was the case in 2020 and again in 2021. If that slight dropoff were a sign that the song was becoming overexposed—a McDonald’s promotional push in 2021 saw Carey get her own holiday menu—any assumed backlash didn’t last long. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” had its best year ever in 2022, spending four weeks at the top.
After being edged out this week by Lee, who squeaked by in overall chart points, Carey is well-positioned to get “All I Want for Christmas Is You” a 13th week at No. 1 sometime this holiday season. (In a fun bit of synchronicity, she is currently embarking on a 13-stop concert tour to promote her Christmas oeuvre.) But Carey, who is famously obsessed with her own myriad chart achievements, presumably has her eyes on a much bigger crown: If the song were to spend 20 cumulative weeks atop the Hot 100, it would beat a record held by Lil Nas X. In 2019, a Billy Ray Cyrus-assisted remix of the rapper’s trap-country smash “Old Town Road” led for 19 weeks, the greater part of five months. Among soloists, meanwhile, the record is held by this year’s “Last Night,” a boilerplate Morgan Wallen song that coasted waves of controversy over the singer’s 2021 racial scandal to a whopping 16 weeks at No. 1.
The question isn’t whether “All I Want for Christmas Is You” will cross both of those thresholds, but when. To play a bit of devil’s advocate, let’s say that a future tide of ill sentiment toward the song’s gale-force ubiquity causes it to underperform over the next several years. If Carey clocks just two weeks at the top annually—matching her lowest tally of recent years—she would still surpass “Last Night” by 2025 and “Old Town Road” by 2026. Even if “All I Want for Christmas Is You” returns to the Hot 100 apex just one week each year, the song will still get there eventually, besting Wallen and Lil Nas X by 2027 and 2030. And who would bet against her? Carey already claims the most weeks at No. 1 of any musician, with 91, and has two songs that have each led for at least 14 weeks: the Boyz II Men collaboration “One Sweet Day” and her mid-aughts comeback single “We Belong Together.”
What’s perhaps even more incredible about the success of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is that it’s almost certain to break a much bigger record: the biggest song of all time. For now, that title belongs to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which skated to 90 weeks on the Hot 100 beginning in November 2019. This is currently the 61st week on the Hot 100 for “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which is guaranteed a spot on the charts through the end of the holidays. (Given that it holds the single-day streaming record on Spotify—garnering a massive 21 million listens on Dec. 24, 2022—it would take all but a world-ending catastrophe for that not to happen.) At its current pace, the song will likely begin 2024 with at least 64 weeks on the Hot 100 and overtake “Blinding Lights” by 2028, considering Carey’s tune tends to average around six weeks a year on the charts.
Were “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to hold that trajectory, it would rewrite virtually every Billboard record in its sights. Harry Styles’ 2022 synth-pop smash “As It Was” holds the title of most weeks in both the top two and top three positions on the Hot 100—at 25 weeks and 29 weeks, respectively. After eight weeks and nine more weeks of charting at those heights, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” would break those records (in about two to three years, for those still counting). The top five and top 10 records are much further away—both are held by “Blinding Lights,” at a respective 43 weeks and 57 weeks—but at this point, it’s essentially a numbers game for Carey. The popularity of Christmas music isn’t slowing down anytime soon, and she is sitting on the most popular Christmas song ever recorded. She could do this literally forever, and she probably will.
All of this is as much a credit to Carey’s singularly savant songwriting prowess as it is changes in Billboard chart metrics that allow Christmas songs to dominate in the streaming music economy. Four other Yuletide-themed tracks have already cracked the top 10 this year—including Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” from 1957 and Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” from 1965—and seven made the upper echelon of the charts in 2022. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” in particular, is poised for a similar run to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” having already logged 54 weeks total on the Hot 100, just seven behind Carey. Lee’s song will likely break some of the same chart achievements given enough time: Within about eight or nine years, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” will have also spent more time on the Hot 100 than “Blinding Lights.” Eventually, Helms and Ives will probably get there, too, as will the new-wave group Wham!, whose 1986 hit “Last Christmas” is currently sitting at No. 5, with 34 total weeks logged on the Hot 100.
If this Christmas is a particularly merry one for Lee, Carey, and company, so will be every other holiday season for the foreseeable future. The late novelist Gore Vidal once quipped that people should “never turn down an opportunity to have sex or to be on television,” but for musicians, his tongue-in-cheek advice can be slightly amended: Never pass up a chance to record a Christmas song.
‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ Will Become the Biggest Song of All Time
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07.12.2023
This week marked a major milestone on the Billboard charts: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” topped the Hot 100 for the first time in the song’s history, 65 years after its release. In its long, slow ascent to the top, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has broken several records: its six-decade journey is the longest trip to No. 1 for any song in history, and the climb makes Lee, at 78, the oldest artist to ever have a Hot 100 chart-topper. That she would finally break through in 2023 isn’t an accident: Lee has been pushing her beloved tune hard through her newly created TikTok account, and in November, a video of her discussing the genesis of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” with fellow legends Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood racked up 1.1 million views. Lee wanted this, and Christmas music fans clearly wanted her to have it.
Lee’s long, long overdue achievement, however, would appear to be the loss of one Mariah Carey, whose inevitable-as-death-and-taxes “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has now been usurped from the Hot 100 summit by another Christmas song for the first time since it reached the top in December 2019. Much like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” it took some patience before Carey’s 1994 single hit No. 1—25 years, only second to Lee in terms of sleeper chart-toppers.
But Carey needn’t sweat Lee’s (much-deserved) success. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is very likely to become the biggest song in music history, but to get there, it’ll take the one thing Carey is loath to acknowledge: time.
Currently, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has logged 12 total weeks at No. 1, by far the most among Christmas-themed tracks. Before Lee joined the short list, the only other holiday tune that had ever led the Hot 100 was “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” an irritating novelty from the cartoon band Alvin and the Chipmunks, which hit the top all the way back in 1958. Another Christmas song wouldn’t join it for another 61 years. Just as Home Alone gave Lee a bump in the cultural consciousness, the slow-drip ascent of “All........
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