Mariah Carey — Why So Popular?
Sammy Meskill ’29
Rather than the beginning of November, starting to count down days until Christmas, or beginning to think about the presents you are going to get for people, the Christmas season starts with Mariah Carey. November 1st, 2025, marked the start of a holiday tradition loved by many and generally around that time of year, a video of Mariah Carey pronouncing the Christmas season to be starting goes viral. Since 2019, in each video she has used her incredible voice to sing “It’s Tiiiiiiiiiiiiime.” The video and the song attached to it, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” appear on gigantic screens in Times Square, make their way into people’s Spotify listening queues, and onto social media platforms. Carey is known for her holiday season songs and has a five octave vocal range that extends into the whistle register. She consistently rises in popularity each year around Christmas time, with other popular hits like “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” and “Oh Santa!” topping the charts.
Besides most of Carey’s songs, I wonder, how many other Christmas songs can you name? The first songs that popped into my head were “Jingle Bell Rock,””Silent Night” and “Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town.” Even though these songs are popular, they don’t come close to any of Carey’s songs in popularity. Currently (12/6), “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is leading the oncoming surge of Christmas song popularity. According to the Billboard Hot 100 song chart on the left, only the most popular songs in the world are currently beating this Christmas classic, showing how popular it is.
Artists like Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Bruno Mars are the most listened to artists in the world, each earning 106 million, 123 million and 114 million Spotify monthly listeners last month, respectively. So, why does Mariah Carey, someone who has 43 million monthly streams on average (less than half the number that Swift does), have a Billboard number one Christmas song that beats all others (including Swift’s) in popularity and invariability? Swift has released around 15 Christmas songs, none of which come near to the levels of popularity that Carey's songs reach.
Maybe the reason for Carey’s success within the holiday genre is her experience in the music industry, releasing “All I Want For Christmas” in 1994. And that explains why many popular artists today, most of whom rose to prominence in the 2010s, have not had time to compete with established holiday-song creators, like Carey. Most of the successful and most listened to artists today are in the pop music industry. And while Carey is somewhat in that industry, she is mostly known for her Christmas music. So, when someone thinks, “what song should I choose to listen to at my Christmas party?,” they wouldn’t think Ariana Grande, but would think Mariah Carey. In general, Grande is much more popular than Carey, but she is a pop artist. So, people don’t associate her with having great music in that genre even if she has released Christmas songs. Though her name is not referenced very often in the news, she still manages to keep her music alive and thriving. Each year, Carey’s videos and songs rise in popularity, affirming that she is truly the queen of the Christmas season.
