“It’s time.”
Mariah Carey delivered her message while singing in a pitch nearly outside the range of human hearing. Time for what? you may wonder as you watch the clip of a latex-clad Carey pumping away on a Peloton. Time for rent reform? A gas bill strike? The end of fossil fuel production? No, it’s time for Christmas, Carey reminds us, as her Halloween costume transforms into a sexy Santa suit.
Two things are usually true on 1 November: you’re bound to find some discounted bulk candy at the convenience store, and you might hear All I Want for Christmas Is You echo through the aisles while you shop.
And if you manage to escape it on Tuesday, you won’t avoid it for long. The song is inescapable, and it managed to re-enter the Billboard Hot 100 list last year at No 1, with 37.6m streams in the US alone.
The mega hit became an instant classic after its release on 29 October 1994, earning Carey more than $60m in royalties. It became the 11th-biggest-selling single of all time with 16m sales, just under Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. That’s justice for the singer, who reportedly did not want to record a Christmas song at the time, considering it a move for hacks and has-beens. Nearly 30 years later, Carey seems quite content making the most out of the mere 55 days she has to capitalize on holiday cheer.
And capitalize she will. There’s Carey’s new book, co-written with Michaela Angela Davis and illustrated by Fuuji Takashi, The Christmas Princess, a Cinderella-esque children’s tale about a girl named “Little Mariah” who – get this – loves to sing about yuletide cheer.
“It’s a short little book, but it really does have a deeper meaning,” Carey told USA Today. A Christmas cash grab, for sure, but one that comes off as slightly more heartfelt than, say, Carey’s special McDonald’s menu, which came out last year.
Carey – who also saw a boost this year with rapper Latto’s hit Big Energy, which features an interpolation of her song Fantasy (itself based on Tom Tom Club’s Genius of Love) – has plans to return to the stage this season. She’ll perform two sets of special concerts in Toronto and New York. Carey let USA Today know that those sets will include songs that have never been performed live.
That’s no doubt music to the ears of her fans, whom Carey calls her “Lambs”, a largely millennial and Gen X crowd that manages to match the enthusiasm of Gen Z’s strongest stan groups. They defend her sometimes unpredictable singing voice and at times train-wreck performances. As Rich Juzwiak wrote in a 2018 New York Times profile, they are earnest in their adoration of the unfailingly positive diva: “The inspirational nature of her message positions her as a shepherd for her lambs.”
No Christmas time comes without its share of scrooges, and Carey’s earworm is just as hated as it is beloved. “Climate change has her defrosting early this year,” one person tweeted. “Eat it, Gen Z. This is Gen X’s nuclear stink bomb you’ll have to deal with for generations,” another wrote.
One man, a songwriter named Andy Stone, might detest the song the most. He’s sued Carey for copyright infringement to the tune of $20m, alleging that she stole the title of his Christmas song with the same name. (An attorney told the Los Angeles Times Stone has “major hurdles in the way of winning any damages”.)
Living in Carey’s home around Christmas time, by the way, sounds either enchanting or a little terrifying, depending on how much you like Hallmark fare. “There are rules that I set,” Carey told USA Today, as divas do. “I don’t care who it is – the kids, if I have guests, whatever – nobody is allowed to play or watch anything other than a Christmas-related thing. If I wake up in the middle of the night and walk into the living room and the music isn’t playing and the lights aren’t on, I just can’t handle it.”
Not to fear: the music is playing. As the absolute arbiters of culture and taste over at Pop Crave reported, All I Want for Christmas Is You re-entered the top 100 on the US iTunes charts a few hours after midnight on 1 November. To quote another classic, it’s the most wonderful time of the year – at least for Mariah Carey.