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Mariah Carey ‘Stunned’ After Smashing One-Day Spotify Record With Earworm 1994 Christmas Tune

By Lucille Barilla
Published on: 00:20 PST, Dec 27, 2018

Mariah Carey was justifiably stunned when her earworm Christmas tune from 1994 broke a single-day streaming record on Spotify on Christmas Eve.

Rolling Stone reported that “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” the holiday song that gets into your head and never is released, hit 10,819,009 streams on Spotify on December 24, according to the streaming service’s official global charts.

The song beat out the 10.4 million streams of XXXTentacion’s single “Sad!” on June 19, which was the day after the rapper was shot and killed, as well as any single-day individual track records from Drake’s blockbuster LP Scorpion released earlier this summer, reported Rolling Stone.

Two decades and a half after its release, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” can now take the top spot on the streaming service.

The song reportedly took the songbird just 15 minutes to write alongside her songwriting partner Walter Afanasieff.

After the success of her 1993 best-selling album Music Box, Carey and her team at Columbia Records brainstormed future projects for the singer. Carey’s then-husband Tommy Mottola, head of Columbia’s label Sony Music Entertainment, came up with the idea of doing a Christmas album.

Speaking about the song upon its release, Carey noted, “It’s very traditional, old-fashioned Christmas. It’s very retro, kind of ’60s.”

“All I Want For Christmas Is You” has re-entered the top 40 every year since 2007. It once again peaked at number two in 2017. With global sales of over 16 million copies, the song is Carey’s biggest international hit and the 11th best selling single of all time.

As of 2017, the song has earned $60 million in royalties.

Rolling Stone reported that “All I Want For Christmas Is You” didn’t earn Carey or the label a financial windfall the day it broke the record.

At around $0.006 a stream, 11 million streams translates to only $66,000 (and that’s before it’s split amongst the various rights-holders of the song, which include co-writers, producers, label executives, and publishers) stated the music publication.

Smooth Radio reported that a children’s picture book inspired by and featuring the lyrics from the song was published in November 2015. The All I Want For Christmas Is You book is about the story of a little girl, whose greatest Christmas wish is for a new puppy.

In 2017, an animated film based on the song was also released.

The song has been covered by Shania Twain, Michael Buble, Lady Antebellum, Miley Cyrus, John Mayer, Ariana Grande, Cee Lo Green, Idina Menzel, and Ingrid Michaelson to name a few.

Perhaps the best cover of all was Carey singing along to her own tune with her two children with Nick Cannon: Moroccan and Monroe.

Go ahead, listen to it again, you know you want to.

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