Merry Christmas

Twinkle lights. Santa hats. Endless trays of cookies. There are plenty of signs that the holidays are upon us, but everyone knows the season isn’t <i>official</i> until you hear one song: Mariah Carey’s impossibly joyous and utterly ubiquitous “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. The jingle-jangling blockbuster is so larger-than-life that in 2019, 25 years after its release, it finally hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, sparking a renewed appreciation of how the song rose above hundreds of other contemporary carols to become the definitive Christmas standard of our time.<br /> The full album also contains 10 other holiday songs, including two originals—“Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)” and “Jesus Born on This Day”, both co-written with her long-time collaborator Walter Afanasieff. But with her vocal acrobatics and range, Carey has a way of making even the classics sound shiny and new. Whether it’s the choir-backed elation of “Joy to the World” or the Motown-flavoured soul of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, <i>Merry Christmas</i> is the rare holiday record that feels uniquely American and everlasting.