Columbia Records
Here’s a nice Christmas gift for Mariah Carey: “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has just hit #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the highest it’s ranked since it was first released in 1994.
If you’re wondering how that could possibly be, keep this in mind: The song only hit the top 10 for the first time last year. If it sounds unbelievable, well, blame Billboard chart rules.
In 1994, when “All I Want for Christmas Is You” first came out, it wasn’t commercially available as a single, and Billboard‘s rules back then prohibited it from charting on the Hot 100. When those rules changed in 1998, the song first charted in 2000, but only at #83.
Billboard now allows old songs to return to the Hot 100 if their stats — like sales, streaming and airplay — are significant. Every year since 2012, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has subsequently returned to the chart. In 2016, the song climbed to #11, and last year, it finally broke into the top 10, reaching #9, mostly due to streaming.
As Vulture notes, the festive track has earned Mariah roughly $60 million over the years. That same article insists, hilariously, that, “The only thing that stands the test of time is Mariah Carey’s Christmas album, Merry Christmas. I mean it. The ONLY thing.”
The article goes on to state, among other things: “It is impossible to get tired of this album; listening to this album is never a disappointing choice. As an experiment, try listening to it for the rest of your life, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Mariah retweeted Vulture’s comical take on the album and wrote, “This is the greatest article ever!! Thank you for getting me into the Christmas spirit and making me laugh out loud.”
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