Are the lyrics to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” stuck in your head? Same.
As soon as you hear the jingling of the bells and the iconic whistle tones of the pop star’s 1994 Christmas anthem, you know the most wonderful time of the year is officially here.
You may know every word to the chart-topping tune, but there are many interesting facts you should know about “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which became diamond-certified by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in 2021 — the first holiday song in recorded music history to do so!
The melody was even inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in April 2023. And decades after its debut, the Christmas queen’s hit single continues to break records.
Each holiday season, the song makes its annual sleigh ride up the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but in 2019, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” reached No. 1 during its 25th anniversary year. Two years later, the holiday hit earned the No. 1 spot on Billboard‘s Greatest of All Time Holiday 100 Songs retrospective.
Clearly, Carey’s carol is a seasonal staple beloved by many and a reflection of the singer’s love of the holiday. “Christmastime really is my favorite part of the year,” she told PEOPLE in 2021 while discussing her holiday “do’s and don’ts.”
The pop icon isn’t letting her record-breaking single stand alone in the Christmas genre. She also released “Fall in Love at Christmas,” her 2021 collaboration with Khalid and Kirk Franklin.
Her holiday happenings don’t stop there. Carey hosted a Christmas extravaganza with her 2021 holiday special, Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues, which premiered on Apple TV+ on Dec. 3 that year. In 2022, she recorded a performance at Madison Square Garden for the CBS special Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to All!, featuring guest appearances from Drew Barrymore and Billy Porter.
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of her Merry Christmas album and the release of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Carey launched a 20-city Christmas Time tour in November 2024, which will end in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 17.
Now, let’s tune back into the catchy Christmas classic for some super fun facts about “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
The song broke multiple Guinness World Records
The jingle jam saw an exciting year in 2019, earning three Guinness World Records titles. Carey’s hit holds records in the following categories: The highest-charting holiday (Christmas/New Year) song on the Billboard Hot 100 by a solo artist, the most streamed track on Spotify in 24 hours (female) and the most weeks in the U.K. singles Top 10 chart for a Christmas song.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” is also the song that gave Carey the record in 2019 for most U.S. No. 1 singles by a female artist, with the holiday hit being her 19th chart-topper.
And, as of May 2024, the song earned Carey another record — the most cumulative weeks on the U.K. singles chart by a female artist (one song) with 131 weeks.
The song was actually written pretty quickly
The Christmas classic was co-written alongside Carey’s then-writing partner, Walter Afanasieff. Though it has long been reported that the song only took 15 minutes to write, Carey later revealed to Parade in 2021 that the time frame was a little bit longer than that.
She explained: “I started writing that on a little DX7 or Casio keyboard that was in this little room in the house that I lived in at the time in Upstate New York lifetimes ago. Just writing down everything that I thought about. All the things that reminded me of Christmas that made me feel festive that I wanted other people to feel.”
Although the song was written quite quickly, the recording process took longer.
“We did take some time doing the record because if you listen to all those background vocals and all that stuff, you can’t do it in five minutes,” Carey told the outlet. “It’s literally impossible unless you had three choirs.”
Mariah Carey didn’t want to do the song at first
Before dropping “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Carey had only released two albums and thought it was too early in her recording career to put out Christmas music. In contrast to her belief that holiday music was something “people did later on,” she said during a 2021 Bobby Bones Show interview that due to her love of Christmas, she decided to give the song a shot.
Song co-writer Walter Afanasieff didn’t think the song would become the hit it is today
The singer doubted the song’s success at the time of its release because releasing Christmas music wasn’t as popular for pop artists to do compared to today. When Billboard asked Afanasieff in 2014 if he thought “All I Want for Christmas Is You” would be the album’s biggest hit, he said, “Nooo.”
He explained: “Twenty years ago, Christmas music and Christmas albums by artists weren’t the big deal that they are today. Back then, you didn’t have a lot of artists with Christmas albums; It wasn’t a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs.”
Mariah Carey decked the studio in Christmas decor during the recording session
Since the song was recorded in August 1994, Carey thought it only appropriate to give the studio a Christmas-y feel. To get into a holiday mindset and allow the festive feeling to come through in the song, she took action.
“The studio looked like Christmas,” producer Randy Jackson said in Amazon Music’s mini-documentary, Mariah Carey Is Christmas: The Story of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” “The temperature was cold. There were, like, ornaments, there were Christmas trees, there were Christmas candles.”
Mariah Carey’s favorite lyric in the song is “I won’t even wish for snow”
“[It’s my favorite line] because I always wish for snow,” Carey said in Amazon Music’s Mariah Carey Is Christmas. She added, “I always want it to be, like, a special, festive winter wonderland.”
Since Los Angeles isn’t necessarily the definition of a “winter wonderland,” Carey takes a special trip to Aspen, Colo., each year to get her snowy fix.
The song was banned from playing at a bar
The song may be a festive fan favorite, but not for everyone!
In October 2021, a bar called Stoneleigh P in Dallas, Tex., posted a sign banning the song, stating it would be skipped if played before Dec. 1 and only allowed to be played once a night after Dec. 1. The establishment — which most likely made Carey’s naughty list that year — went viral for the note on Twitter (now X) and received a swift clapback from the singer herself.
“Is this the war on Christmas I’ve heard about,” one user reacted in a now-deleted tweet, per Texas Monthly, to which Carey responded with an image from her Game of War video game campaign — looking prepared to battle … in the name of Christmas, of course.
Mariah Carey’s twins are in the music video remake
In honor of the 25th anniversary of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in 2019, Carey released an updated music video for the holiday classic — with little guest stars. Her twins, Moroccan and Monroe, appeared in the production, which she described in a live Q&A session for its world premiere as “kind of the opposite of the original video.”
The twins — who were just 8 years old in the music video — made another cameo in Carey’s ”Fall in Love at Christmas” visual in 2021.
No live instruments were used while recording
Yes, you read that right! When you listen to the song, it sounds like there’s a live orchestra playing the iconic chords and melodies beneath Carey’s vocals, but according to Afanasieff, the song was never recorded with a band.
“We did other songs during the sessions with the band. But there was never a version [of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”] with a band,” he told Variety in 2019. “I think we might’ve tried it, and it just didn’t sound as good. It needed to be brighter, more fun and more of what I thought a Christmas song should be on the radio, so I kept all of my synth/sequencer parts, computer parts.”
The song’s lyrics were inspired by Mariah Carey’s humble childhood
During an interview with Genius in December 2018, Carey reminisced about how her own childhood Christmas experiences influenced some of the lyrics behind the festive tune.
“I did have to sit back and go, ‘What do I really want to write about Christmas?’ And I got into it,” the Grammy winner said. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna write from the place of that kid that didn’t grow up with any money, that always wanted to have the most festive Christmas. And somehow people I was related to would come in and ruin the holiday every year.’ I just want to do the most festive thing I can do so when I grow up I’m gonna make this the best holiday ever.”
There’s an All I Want for Christmas Is You movie
It’s true! Directed by Guy Vasilovich, All I Want for Christmas Is You (2017) features Carey voicing an animated version of herself. In the movie, her younger self (voiced by Breanna Yde) wishes to receive a puppy for the winter holiday.
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