Its Mariahs world (obviously) but Ariana and Kelly are settling into it.
Snow Jams
Were making our lists and playing them twice.
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Eleven years ago, trad-pop vocalist Michael Buble released his first full album of holiday music.
What would have been the point?
Standards are what Buble does best and back then, those warhorse songs drove the holiday-music market.
The same week Bubles album hit No.
1,Billboardlaunched a new holiday-music chart, one to track individual songs.
Holiday Songs launched with 50 positions.
(Two of the covers were by Buble.)
2, then-17-year-old Justin Bieber, with Mistletoe.
1, a track that was exactly as old as Bieber himself, first written and recorded in 1994.
Yes, that song.
All these years later, Mariah Careys All I Want for Christmas Is You isstillNo.
1 on the Holiday chart, whichBillboarddoubled to 100 positionsin 2013 and renamed theHoliday 100.
1 for 52 of them, or 91 percent of the time.
Its enough to make you wonder whyBillboardneeds this thing at all.
Frankly, the Holiday chart is small potatoes for All I Want for Christmas Is You.
1among all hit songs.
1 spot for a long winters nap.)
Old holiday hits do wax and wane in popularity from year to year.
It got as high asNo.
Whereas the roughly contemporaneous Dean Martin take on Let It Snow!
6 in 2019and opens the 2022 season at a respectable No.
9; on this weeks Holiday 100 relaunch, it only ranks 25th.
But these are all decades-old recordings.
What about new, or at least newer, carols?
Has anything broken through the radio-and-Spotify ice floe?
The seemingly safer approach is the Buble strategy: the umpteenth cover of a Christmas standard.
Typically, this is how you sell albums.
Buyers of these compact discs want a known quantity.
This includes hymns: Grobans O Holy Night has never climbed higher than No.
26 on the Holiday 100 and hasnt appeared on the chart in a few years.
(Remember that it took decades for the Wham!
and Carey compositions, both late-20th-century entrants, to become the reliable standards they now are.)
In its first holiday season, Tree peaked atNo.
12 on the big chart.
Im betting on Clarksons Tree as the underestimated tortoise in the seasonal race.
So what topped the chart the other five weeks?
Its a hodgepodge of four singles, three of which could be considered candidates for new-standard status.
1 albumsandblockbuster YouTube videos.
A decade later, Mistletoe has a so-so legacy.
Clearly, Justin is not going to provide a permanent respite from the Mariahpocalypse.
1 on the Holiday 100for one week.
A Pyrrhic victory, at best, and no ones gonna mistake thebarely avoidableDrummer for a new standard.
Mary, Did You Know?
Their Mary was the smash topping the Holiday 100 for two weeks in 2014(two!
Mariah got paused for a whole fortnight!)
and basically becoming the flagship version of the kitsch hymn.
It often returns on the lower rungs of the Holiday 100 (its only No.
2 Holiday in 2016 and is currently No.
So … what about the so-called Baby Mariah?
Early on, it was easy to underestimate.
37 on the Holiday 100, and that was six years ago).
For the 2022 season, Grandes Santa reappears at No.
Neither Clarkson nor Grande is any imminent threat to Careys 28-year-old Christmas classic.
2 every year on both the Hot 100 and the Holiday 100 cansteal a march on Mariah.
The game of Christmas-standard creation requires patience and Carey has been playing the long game.
