Sunday 25 December 2011

Recap: Mariah's 2011 Holiday Season

Mariah's original version of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" was released in 1994. The song, written by Mariah, has become a modern Christmas classic, dominating the radio airplay and Billboard charts every holiday season since. BMI recently described it as "a slice of Christmas pop-soul perfection so infectious and heart-warming, it became an instant classic heard everywhere, every holiday season".

"All I Want for Christmas is You" is one of the best-selling holiday songs of all time, inescapable every Christmas in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and the first holiday ringtone to be certified double-platinum. This year, "All I Want For Christmas Is You" became the first holiday song ever to reach sales of 2 million digital downloads!

Billboard magazine launched a brand new Holiday Songs chart, combining sales and airplay of all Christmas songs. "All I Want For Christmas Is You" debuted at #1 on the chart and stayed there for three weeks! It is also #1 on Billboard's Holiday Airplay chart as well as Billboard's Adult Contemporary Recurrents chart.

Mariah recently told The UK Sun she was humbled by the song's longevity: "I'm amazed and humbled by its popularity, even all these years later. And I think it's great that people have the song as a ringtone. Who'd have thought, all those years ago when I wrote it, that it would still be having an impact today?"

From My Chemical Romance, Lady Antebellum and Michael Buble, to the cast of Glee and Justin Bieber, a diverse and growing collection of artists have covered the tune. In fact, during November, the Billboard 200's top 10 had three albums (Buble, Glee, Bieber) carried by this cover. The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones dubbed it "one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon". Rolling Stone readers picked it as one of their favorite Christmas songs this year.

In early November, Mariah partnered with Justin Bieber for a Super Festive version of "All I Want For Christmas Is You". The two superstars shot the music video at the famous Macy's store in New York City. The video premiered on November 30th, during the annual Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting Ceremony.

The song is so popular that everyone loves singing it when Christmas comes. From the British HMS Ocean Troops miming "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (the video became a viral hit following Mariah's tweet to them with over 3.5 million views), through the perfectly unified New York dancers choreography of "All I Want" to the guy singing the song with his iPod in a department song.

Other international versions included a Polish basketball team singing to Mariah's original and a singing flash mob in Australia performing the song. Blogger Perez Hilton hosted a contest on his site for best karaoke version of the song and most recently, X-Factor winner Melanie Amaro performed the song on the show's finale.

As if all this wasn't enough, Mariah teamed up with the wonderful John Legend for a duet on the soulful original "When Christmas Comes". The two shot the video in Mariah's house and the video premiered on "A Very BET Christmas Special" that aired on December 11th. The song went to #1 in South Korea and #3 on Japan's holiday songs chart.

(MariahCarey.com)



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