It’s Christmas 2023. And Mariah Carey rolls out with her pimp candy cane once again, for “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

I adore me some Mariah. Truly, I do. And I could not be happier for her to have an annual Christmas bag. But. Y’all. I’m getting a bit tired of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. And Mariah herself seems tired of it too. Because she seems a bit despondent this year. Yep. Had to bring out the Mariah-Webbster for this post. Because it’s what Mariah deserves.

Mariah locking down an angle at this point in her career is great. And I cannot stress enough how incredible of an achievement it is that she wrote an original Christmas song, which is now considered a traditional Christmas song around the world. Achieving all that Mariah has achieved throughout her career with a string of number one singles and albums and best sellers which all held records is already absolutely bonkers. But to have an original Christmas song become what it was and be a number 1 hit is just on a whole other level on which she will never be touched.

And whilst for the past few years Mariah has leaned into the popularity of her Christmas song and has seemed all in on it, something seems off this year. And it’s really unfortunate, because this is the first year since she was pregnant with Dem Babies where it feels like Mariah has been the most active and done the most in the way of traditional promo. And on top of this, she’s been looking amazing. (I wonder if Mariah has a new style team, because her outfits over the past few months have been different from what she usually wears and it’s nice to see her shit switch up). But Mariah doesn’t seem as jubilant and festive as she usually does. It feels like she’s going through the e- [Turns and looks into the camera] -motions. But Mariah stays keeping up appearances and pushing through. She graced the Billboard Music Awards with a performance of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and has also released yet another music video for “All I Want for Christmas Is You”.

The fan video was cute. But I do wish we had gotten professionally shot footage of Mariah’s performance of the song, intercut with fans and the legend Debbie Allen performing the song. It just felt like there was too much going on the video. Also, in light of Beyoncé and Taylor Swifts concert movies, giving fans a taste of the Christmas show professionally shot would have been a cool look and also allowed Mariah to test the waters of maybe releasing her Merry Christmas One and All! show in full, either on a streaming service or physically on DVD and Blu-Ray.

I am also getting a little tired of Mariah defrosting for the Christmas season to keep pushing the same Christmas song and I wonder if this is why Mariah seems over it. I get that the song is huge and a holiday mainstay. But Mariah has two Christmas albums which feature other great original songs which she could also push. Credit to her, she did try to switch things up and make “Oh Santa!” happen in 2020. But unfortunately, the execution of that didn’t land, which was a whole mess. Because not only is “Oh Santa!” a really good song, but it is 100% in Ariana Grande’s wheelhouse. So we could have gotten something so much better than what we got. It really should’ve just been Mariah and Ariana, with a full on 1960s video much like the original one. And then there was “Fall in Love at Christmas”, which I thought was a really nice song, but I think there was an error in judgement when it came to the inclusion of Khalid. He made sense from a commercial perspective of tapping into a younger audience, but he just didn’t make sense for the song itself. Usher would have been a far better choice overall

So I really hope when Mariah returns to hibernate in ice, that she forms a plan to push another song for Christmas 2024. “Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)” and “Christmas Time Is in the Air Again” are RIGHT there. Because, dare I say it, I think people generally are getting a little sick of hearing this same one Christmas song from Mariah. 

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