“All I Want for Christmas is You” is a piece of holiday music sung by Mariah Carey that holds a number of significant records for popularity. Written and first issued in 1994, it was not until 2019 that it reached No. 1 on the hit parade, the longest journey to the top by any song. According to Wikipedia: “With an estimated sales of over 14 million copies worldwide, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the best-selling holiday song by a female artist, and one of the best-selling physical singles in music history. The song is certified 12 times platinum by RIAA, denoting sales of 12 million copies in the United States, becoming the first and only holiday song to accomplish this feat. By 2022, it had reportedly earned $80 million in royalties.”
Though I personally loathe the tune, it has achieved iconic status and has evoked this 2015 piece of adulation in Atlantic magazine: “Carey’s masterpiece is an incredible feat of philosophical subterfuge. Christmas is a time of material and affection-based excess, yet the song is narrowly focused on just one thing: getting to be with a specific person, e.g., you. It rejects the idea of love in general in favor of love in particular, simultaneously defying and defining pop-music conventions. With infinitely more economy of expression and undoubtedly catchier lyrics, ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ is a sort of Hegelian dialectic of Christmastime desire, taking the conflicting notions of abundance and specificity and packaging them neatly into an earworm for the generations.”
Hegelian dialectic, my Aunt Fanny. Here is my favourite iteration of the song:
I have often thought The Atlantic has gone insane….
Now I will be hearing this song all day…..