1642 Mariah Carey Xmas
Mariah Carey is going on a Christmas tour.

Why is Mariah Carey all we want for Christmas?

Tim Devriese
© BRUZZ
14/12/2018

Since 1994, it is impossible to imagine Christmas without the sleigh bells of Mariah Carey’s hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. What is the attraction of the hit and of La Carey, the queen of Christmas?

“I know it’s over the top, but that’s how festive I am!” In a silky dress and draped over a couch, Mariah Carey orates about her love of Christmas on the shopping channel. It is her favourite holiday. We’re not surprised because the Christmas holidays have been good for the American pop star. In 2017, it was estimated that she has received 60 million dollars in royalties for “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, her 1994 monster hit.

Carey has dominated the charts during the holidays ever since and along with her song, she has become synonymous with Christmas. “She didn’t just write a Christmas song,” a fan says. “She wrote the Christmas song. The Christmas anthem.”

A full-on Christmas moment

Musicologists, pop scientists, and half the internet have written libraries full of books about the hit. Songwriter Walter Afanasieff and Carey, who co-wrote the song, apparently borrowed elements from Christmas classics by Judy Garland and Nat King Cole. To these they added a wall of music of the type that had been popularized by producer Phil Spector in the 1960s. And the lyrics are so simple and good-hearted that everyone can easily sing along, and they will melt the coldest heart.

The song’s composition makes it sound as though it has been resounding across Christmas markets since the beginning of time, without sounding stale. And thanks to the nostalgic trip of the past few years the song is doing better than ever.

Carey makes no attempt to conceal her love of Christmas. She is always in the mood for “a full-on Christmas moment”. In interviews, she is almost always lying on her side, and nine times out of ten there is a gigantic Christmas tree glittering in the background.

Carey makes no attempt to conceal her love of Christmas. She is always in the mood for “a full-on Christmas moment”.

Jingle all the way

La Carey doesn’t care. And she’s right not to. Because behind all that plastic camp and all her affected diva behaviour, she masks tons of bravura. She has the range. If anybody can bang the big Christmas drum, it is her. La Carey is a songwriter in her own right and still has a voice that will bring the house down, with a few (excessively mediatized) exceptions.

Her fans admire her skill and her survival instinct. She rose like a phoenix from the ashes of her disastrous cinema debut Glitter and continues to make one (self-written) hit after another. Just like her evergreen, La Carey elicits contradictory feelings. Commiseration and compassion for what she has been through.

Awe and respect for her immense talent. Disdain for her purported diva caprices and horror at the schmaltz that she sometimes releases on the world. Carey and Christmas are like the drunk uncle at a family party. It wouldn’t be Christmas without them. And if you’ve had a few yourself, it becomes much more bearable.

> Mariah Carey, All I want for Christmas European Tour
Vorst Nationaal, 14th December

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Read more about: Brussel, Muziek, Mariah Carey

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