Mariah Carey’s very popular Christmas anthem has topped the UK charts, 26 years after it was first released. All I Want for Christmas is You is a regular in most of the yuletide hit lists and is blasted through loudspeakers attempting to bring Christmas cheer to the streets of our towns and villages, to the patrons of shopping complexes and centres, and to the personal and intimate space of one's own home, rubbing shoulders with Away in a Manger and with What Child is This.
The song has achieved classic status alongside evergreen Christmas anthems like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band's Happy Xmas War is Over. It is an entreaty for romantic love and a disdain for material things.
The New Yorker had acknowledged it as "one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon" when it was first released back in 1994.
Ariana Grande’s Positions was dethroned by Carey from the top of the charts as festive songs account for the week’s hot sellers.
All I Want for Christmas has been streamed 10.8 million times, more than any other song in any single week of 2020 so far, and has sold 1.24m copies in its lifetime, making it the 84th highest-selling song in history.
As of December 11, the top five singles included Wham!’s schmalzy Last Christmas, The Pogues' dystopian Fairtytale of New York, besides Carey’s own anthem.
Michael Bublé’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas at no. 7 and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas at no. 8 are other worthy examples of returns to the UK charts.
However, it is not only the Christmas classics that have made the grade into the top 40 as cover versions are popular as well. One can mention that of Donnie Hathaway's This Christmas by Jess Glynne and Justin Bieber’s interpretation of Brenda Lee's of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.
Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me at no. 11 and Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath the Tree at no. 16 are entirely new songs that the singers hope would eventually achieve the same status as Mariah Carey’s modern classic.