Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" returns to No. 1 this week, notching its record-tying 19th week atop the Billboard Hot 100. Its outright ownership of the all-time record seems as inevitable as the tides — as does, sadly, the further holiday dominance of one Michael Steven Bublé.
TOP STORY
In 2019, Lil Nas X set a record that looked likely to stand for a while: His song "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)" held down the No. 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 for an astounding 19 weeks. Last year, Shaboozey matched that feat with another country/hip-hop hybrid: "A Bar Song (Tipsy)."
That's not to suggest that "Old Town Road" and "A Bar Song" are the two biggest hits of all time. They're merely beneficiaries of a streaming landscape in which listeners are continually fed the same songs they've already enjoyed; that's led to epic chart runs that have made it harder than ever for new songs to break through.
This week, Lil Nas X and Shaboozey are joined in the record books by… well, truly one of the biggest hits of all time, as Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" leaps to No. 1 and secures its own 19th week atop the Hot 100. The song, which came out in 1994 and first hit the top 10 in 2017, has now led the chart for the last seven holiday seasons. To call that an all-time record is an understatement: Only one song in history has made it to No.1 for two separate chart runs: Chubby Checker's 1960 classic "The Twist."
It's certainly possible that other Christmas songs will unseat Carey every once in a while: Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" briefly knocked it to No. 2 a few years ago, thanks in part to a then-recent video. But it's hard to surpass a song that's become so synonymous with the season.
The competitor with the most momentum — and "momentum" is a funny word to use when the song in question came out in 1984 — is "Last Christmas" by Wham! That track has been gaining steam in recent years, and this week rises to its highest-ever chart position at No. 2.
Chart trends in holiday music typically unfold glacially, year over year, but they're there if you look for them. The one with the most potential to shake up the field also happens to be the most egregious: For those who seek the musical equivalent of eggnog spiked with bathwater, Michael Bublé is hitting new career highs. In the process, he's endangering the perennial success of a few holiday staples.
One quirk of the holiday charts is that, for all the repetition of standards in the Christmas canon, there's really only room for one go-to version of each song. In fact, of the 37 holiday songs that pop up in this week's top 50, only two are duplicates. Perry Como's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (1951) and Burl Ives' "A Holly Jolly Christmas" (1964) suddenly find themselves competing with newer versions by Michael Bublé.
The competition is proving especially daunting for Ives, whose version of the song was in the top five as recently as a year ago. This week, it languishes at No. 16 — a significant lag, given how incrementally the holiday charts typically change from year to year. It's one thing for Bublé's rise to dim the light of, say, Perry Como, whose vocal similarities to Michael Bublé reflect poorly on both singers. But Burl Ives? This means war!
And, look, if it seems like our man Bubes is catching more flak than usual in this week's column, that's on him. You mess with the Burl, you get the horns.
TOP SONGS
In just a few weeks, Mariah Carey, Wham! and, yes, Michael Bublé will get stuffed back into the attic with the artificial tree. And when they do, we'll likely get a chart landscape that looks quite a bit like it did at the beginning of last month, led by three of 2025's biggest chart-toppers: HUNTR/X's "Golden," Taylor Swift's "The Fate of Ophelia" and Alex Warren's "Ordinary."
Those three songs haven't yet been crowded all the way out of the top 10. And it's worth noting that, after eight weeks at No. 1, "The Fate of Ophelia" is no longer the top non-holiday song on the Hot 100. With awards season — and, in all likelihood, an Oscar nomination — looming, "Golden" is looking, well… like some color that signifies success.
Also gaining momentum, but a little easier to miss, is the country singer Ella Langley. Were it not for the holiday onslaught, her song "Choosin' Texas" — which drops from No. 11 to No. 27 this week — would likely be sitting at No. 9, which would have made it the first top 10 hit of her career.
TOP ALBUMS
Sure, Taylor Swift's "The Fate of Ophelia" gives up a bit of ground this week. But The Life of a Showgirl returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart after a week away, followed by two of 2025's most durable hits: Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem and the soundtrack to KPop Demon Hunters.
Three holiday albums join them in the top 10 — Michael Bublé's Christmas, Bing Crosby's Ultimate Christmas and Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas — while the likes of Nat "King" Cole, Mariah Carey and Phil Spector hover awkwardly just outside the door, blow on their hands, avoid eye contact and wait to be let in.
The Christmas cavalcade aside, this week is part of a slower stretch for the albums chart, as major stars tend to refrain from releasing new albums in December.
But one old album made a move worth noting this week. Buoyed by the streaming release of a fine documentary on HBO Max, Jeff Buckley's 1994 classic Grace re-enters the Billboard 200 at No. 144. That's the highest chart position it's ever attained — a reminder that the Billboard charts don't always properly measure an album's reach or impact.
Take last week's debut of One More Time, a five-song EP by Aerosmith and YUNGBLUD. On last week's Billboard 200, One More Time debuted at No. 9. This week, it plummets from the chart entirely.
It's worth considering which means more: a top 10 album that charted for all of seven days, or a multiplatinum classic that's taken 31 years to hit No. 144. On the charts, as in life, there are more ways to measure success than simply listing where you've peaked.
Copyright 2025 NPR
