Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” Returns to No. 1 on Billboard’s Holiday 100

Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas…

The 44-year-old half-Venezuelan actress has dashed her way back to the No. 1 spot on Billboard‘s Holiday 100 songs chart with her modern classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which moves up from 2-1.

Mariah Carey

Since the Holiday 100 launched in December 2011, “Christmas” is the only song that has reigned in each season.

It tallies its 14th week at the summit, of 18 total weeks that the chart has been tabulated.

“Christmas” reclaims the Holiday 100 summit despite not leading any of the chart’s main component rankings. It places at No. 2 on Holiday Digital Songs, with 37,000 downloads sold (down 3 percent), according to Nielsen Music; No. 3 on Holiday Airplay (25.3 million in radio audience, up 18 percent); and No. 4 on Holiday Streaming Songs (2.1 million U.S. streams, up 19 percent).

Still, its balanced points spread is enough to dethrone Pentatonix‘s “Mary, Did You Know?” after two weeks atop the Holiday 100. (The only songs to lead the list other than “Christmas” and “Mary”: Pentatonix’s “Little Drummer Boy,” on December 21, 2013, and Justin Bieber‘s “Mistletoe,” on January 7, 2012.)

“To me, it’s kind of a cosmic occurrence that happens once every five billion years,” Walter Afanasieff, who co-wrote “Christmas” with Carey in 1994, told Billboard in October of the song’s perennial success. “We feel lucky, because it was the last major song to enter that Christmas canon. Then the door slammed shut. [Although] I’m sure there’s going to be another one; there has to be.”

“Christmas,” says Afanasieff, “just keeps growing and growing. I believe [it] will be the most successful, popular Christmas song of all time.”

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