The song previously reached number three in 2018 and has now hit the top spot, 25 years since its release.
A quarter of a century since being released, Mariah Carey’s Christmas banger, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” has risen to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time ever.
The song previously reached number three in 2018 and has now hit the top spot, 25 years since its release.
The achievement marks Carey’s 19th number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and she has now made history with the most number one songs on the chart by a solo artist.
The festive hit is featured on Carey’s 1994 Christmas album, Merry Christmas, which was recently re-released by Sony Music Entertainment’s Legacy Recordings as Merry Christmas (Deluxe Anniversary Edition).
The original record is the best-selling Christmas album of all-time.
It’s biggest hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” is nearing 1 billion streams worldwide and has spawned a children’s book, family film and mini-documentary, Mariah Carey Is Christmas: The Story of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ for Amazon.
In the Amazon special, Carey reflected on the iconic hit, which has earned her more than $60 million in royalties.
“When I first made the record, it wasn’t as big a hit as it is now. It’s grown in popularity over the years,” she said. “My favorite line in the song is, ‘I won’t even wish for snow,’ because I always wish for snow!”
In old ET footage of Carey taken less than 48 hours after the song's release, she also revealed that she wrote the song's lyrics after the music video was filmed.
"I wrote the song after I shot the video and it just happened to work really well when we put it to the music," she shared.
ET recently spoke with the track’s co-writer Walter Afanasieff, who discussed how at the time the song was created, musical endeavors like Christmas albums or Las Vegas residencies were something artists were more likely to do towards the end of their careers, but Carey decided to go ahead and make a holiday record anyway.
Selecting some of her favorite Christmas songs, the two then decided to write three tracks themselves. “We decided to do a fun up-tempo, song which ended up being ‘All I Want for Christmas,” Afanasieff shared.
The musician noted how quickly the hit came together.
“The way Mariah and I always wrote together [was] I’m usually on the piano and I start playing chords and different little things and that causes her to sing melodies -- before any lyrics are written or anything like that,” he said. “We were sitting at the piano and I just started playing. We decided to do a more old-fashioned, rock-n-roll kind of song and I remember trying to play a little boogie woogie piano.”
Afanasieff said the iconic melody was born and Carey started singing along.
“It was just a very instantaneous, collaborative, wonderful moment,” he shared. “It wasn’t hard at all. We almost played it all the way through because it was very natural for us."
“And, later on Mariah filled in all of the words and the gaps with a few of her melody things, but that’s how we did it -- sitting at the piano, very easily, very quickly and very inspired by the Christmas spirit,” he added.
To celebrate the album and song’s anniversary and continued success, Carey recently hit the streets of New York to spread Christmas cheer with Billy Eichner.
“Hi Mariah, I love you so much!” exclaimed one surprised passer-by.
See more on Carey below.
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