It’s time … for “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to make its annual trip to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
Mariah Carey‘s modern classic has topped the chart for a fifth holiday season: It first reached the top 10 in 2017, then managed to reach #1 in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. What helped it get there this year was the December 8 premiere of a new “Festive Lambs Edition” video featuring the song, as well as 69-cent holiday song pricing at iTunes.
This is the 13th week in total that the 1994 track has spent at #1, extending its record as the holiday song that has notched the most time on top. The only other holiday songs ever to reach the summit on the chart are “The Chipmunk Song,” for four weeks, and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which just racked up two weeks.
In addition, Billboard notes that the song is the first to top the Hot 100 and then return six more nonconsecutive times. It beats both Harry Styles‘ “As It Was” and Morgan Wallen‘s “Last Night,” both of which returned to the top five times.
Meanwhile, if you’re wondering how much money Mariah makes every year from the song, Billboard has estimated that in 2022, the song brought in $8.5 million globally, including publishing royalties of $3.2 million.
Of course, Mariah doesn’t make all the money herself: Her record label gets a chunk of it and her co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, gets half the publishing royalties. Still, Billboard estimates that the song makes her a minimum of more than $2 million a year — and that doesn’t even count royalties from other people covering the track, or licensing for TV specials.
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