It’s November 1 and with that comes the most iconic Christmas song: ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’Mariah Carey’s festive family favourite. It has become so popular that the singer has become synonymous of the holidays and her song still receives a huge amount of play time, nearly three decades after it was first released.
The 1994 yuletide classic is so popular that it remains a lucrative source of income for Carey every year, largely due to the royalties that she is owed for third-party usage.
Last year she thawed from a big freeze. This year her voice turned Halloween scares into Christmas joy. Check it out:
A report from the New York Post estimated that she makes around $3 million every year from the song. In 2021 it was claimed that Carey has raked in more than $60 million from ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ and she continues to profit from the track.
She also enjoys a number of sponsorship ties thanks to the song. In 2021, to mark the 25th anniversary of her Christmas album, Carey starred in the festive advert for Walkers crisps.
Carey’s song beaten to Christmas top spot by Bing Crosby
While ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ may be the most well-known Christmas song, it is not the highest selling festive tune. That honour goes to Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’which has sold an estimated 50 million copies.
That not only makes it the top selling Christmas song, but it is in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest selling single of all time.
Crosby actually holds the top two spots in the all-time Christmas song rankings. His 1978 version of ‘Silent Night’ is at number two on the list with more than 30 million copies sold.
In a fairly distant third sits Mariah Carey and ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’, which is now a six-time multi-platinum single. Globally it has racked up more than 16 million sales, making it the 12th-highest single ever.
