Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Holiday music rules the pop charts once again this week, as 

's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" scores its 17th nonconsecutive week at No. 1 — the third longest run of all time. On the albums chart, the K-pop group Stray Kids debuts at No. 1 with 

 200 with its first six charting albums, which is a new record to kick off a career. And, though the same five holiday songs sit atop the Hot 100 as last week (and last year at this time, for that matter), there's a fresh milestone for more recent-vintage Christmas songs by 

This past summer, the K-pop group Stray Kids debuted atop the 

 tied an all-time record, as only one other artist's chart history — that of the late rapper 

 — began with five straight albums that debuted at No. 1. Now, just four months later, Stray Kids 

 debuts atop the charts. That's a run of six straight No. 1 debuts, all of them within a span of just three calendar years.

's chart success is derived from sales rather than streaming — with an emphasis on CD sales, curiously enough — Stray Kids' stay atop the 

 200 may be short. (The group's previous records have followed a similar path.) But it speaks to the considerable power of K-pop music that so many albums in the genre have debuted at or near the top of the charts this year.

If you're looking for a metric to convey K-pop's growth in the U.S. — as well as the increasingly international nature of the pop charts in the streaming era — a total of 27 albums have hit No. 1 on the 

 200 with vocals predominantly performed in a language other than English. Of those 27, exactly two-thirds of them are in Korean, and all of them have come out since 2018.

 holds at No. 2 for a third straight week since its debut atop the chart, while 

 surges back into the Top 10, climbing from No. 11 to No. 9.

That leaves three holiday titles to round out the Top 10. Though none of its songs have hit the Top 10 on the 

 climbs from No. 7 to No. 5 — which suggests that much of its audience prefers to hear Bublé drain the life out of holiday favorites in album-length doses, mostly via streaming. 

, a generously portioned holiday collection from earlier this year, climbs from No. 8 to No. 6, while Mariah Carey's 

 leaps into the Top 10, climbing from No. 14 to No. 10 on the strength of… well you know.

Yes, in a development as predictable as the tides, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" 

. It's the song's third straight week atop the chart, which is no big surprise; what's notable is the accumulation of weeks at No. 1, which is approaching record territory. With 17 weeks at No. 1 — all of them racked up in two- to four-week bursts starting in 2019 — the song has now posted the third-longest run at No. 1 in the history of the 

 Hot 100, which dates back to 1958. It also stands alone with the longest run of Carey's career; her "One Sweet Day," with 

, was a world-beating record-setter with 16 weeks at No. 1 back in 1995-96.

Assuming it tops the chart next week, as well, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" looks primed to break the all-time record shortly after the commencement of the 2025 holiday season — assuming no song runs up a longer streak between now and then. Currently, the all-time record of 19 weeks at No. 1 is held by two songs, both of them from the streaming era:

's "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)" from 2019 and 

's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which dominated the Hot 100 for much of this year. (It finally dropped out of the Top 10 just this week, but looks poised to reenter the chart's upper reaches once the holiday perennials get mothballed.)

Speaking of holiday perennials — and the stench of mothballs — the usual suspects round out the Top 5. 

's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" holds at No. 2, a spot it knows well, while 

's "Last Christmas" jumps from No. 4 to No. 3, thanks in part to a new physical release and the release of a Wham! documentary on Netflix. "Last Christmas" swaps places with the zombified corpse of Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," while Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas" holds at No. 5.

Only one non-holiday song sits in this week's Top 10, so give credit to 

 for their resilience as "Die With a Smile" holds at No. 6. Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" dampens the season by jumping from No. 11 to No. 7 — seriously, people, Andy Williams, 

 — while Dean Martin's "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" leaps from No. 12 to No. 8. And at No. 9 and No. 10 are… well, sit tight for a sec.

So, before we get to Nos. 9 and 10, here's a wild statistic: Until this week, the newest holiday song to hit the 

" that incorporated news clips from the 20th century, which helped G's "Auld Lang Syne" reach No. 7 in 2000.)

Which means that, for nearly 25 years, not a single newly recorded holiday song — of the thousands upon thousands that have been released — has graced the 

 Top 10. Nothing by Taylor Swift, nothing by Beyoncé, not one song by any artist whose career began in the 21st century. Hope you like Andy Williams, suckers, because the holiday season is for songs that bored your grandparents!

So consider it progress that two 21st-century holiday songs have ended the drought and hit the Top 10 for the very first time this week: 

's 2013 song "Underneath the Tree" climbs from No. 15 to No. 10, while Ariana Grande's "Santa Tell Me," from 2014, rises from No. 14 to No. 9. So if you want to know how long it takes a holiday song to travel from "new" to "officially welcomed into the canon," the answer is: "at least a decade." Even for those of us who've had "Santa Tell Me" stuck in their head for weeks, it has to count as progress.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a sense of just how old most seasonal standards are, consider that "Auld Lang Syne" is one of only two holiday songs from the '90s to have ever hit the Top 10. The other? A sweet little ditty, perhaps you've heard it, called "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

Arts and Culture

Music

Homepage

Stephen Thompson

Author

Holiday music rules the pop charts once again this week, as Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" scores its 17th nonconsecutive week at No. 1 — the third longest run of all time.

Mariah Carey and K-pop group Stray Kids rule this week's charts

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox