© 2020 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, December 3, 2020 |A
PERSONAL JOURNAL.
HOLIDAY ENTERTAINMENT
Christmas Special,” premiering Fri-
day on the Apple TV+ streaming
service. The partnership first took
shape last February, she says—
shortly after “All I Want” became
the first Christmas song in 60 years
to hit No. 1, and before coronavirus
sent the entertainment industry
into a deep freeze.
The special was shot earlier this
fall under Covid-safety protocols,
and features a celebrity lineup and
a story line about Santa calling on
Ms. Carey to help recharge holiday
cheer. With live performances still
off the table, the special gives Ms.
Carey a stand-in for the run of
Christmas-themed concerts she
would normally do. Apple declined
to comment for this article.
“I really do live from Christmas
to Christmas,” she says. She moni-
tors details from the color of tree
lights (no yellow!) to crafting a new
transition from “Sleigh Ride” into
“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,”
which the singer says “is definitely
a moment for me.”
What makes “All I Want For
Christmas Is You” a holiday ear-
worm (written and produced by
Ms. Carey and Walter Afanasieff,
once a frequent collaborator) is her
swinging, stair-run vocals and a
throwback ’60s production style. It
has gotten bumps in the past, in-
cluding from a charming cover in
“Love Actually,” a 2003 rom-com
which itself became a holiday fa-
vorite. Yet “All I Want” didn’t reg-
ister on the top-songs chart until
2012, when streaming started to
catch on with listeners, and first
counted toward the official ranking
of hit songs.
The song’s exponential stream-APPLEO
n a video call before
Thanksgiving, Mariah
Carey looks like she’s on
a Christmas card come
to life. The singer with
19 No. 1 songs is wearing
a dress with the sparkle of snow
crystals, and her hair flows over her
shoulders in frosty waves. She’s
surrounded by gift wrapped pack-
ages, fuzzy pillows and glowing
white trees.
“I’m sitting here with eight trees
in my house,” she says of the set-
ting for the interview. “It’s com-
pletely over the top.”
It’s an apt description for Ms.
Carey’s commitment to Christmas—
and the bountiful seasonal business
that has become a pillar of her ca-
reer. Her 26-year-old song “All I
Want for Christmas Is You” is the
engine of one of the biggest holiday
hit machines of all time. The song,
off a 1994 Christmas album that ini-
tially seemed like a risky detour,
only simmered for years as a staple
of Christmas radio. But in the digi-
tal era it has undergone a miracu-
lous ascent, thanks to its age-defy-
ing bop, the power of holiday
playlists, the multiplying effects of
the streaming ecosystem, and her
fans’ ritual dedication to the song.
She has built a franchise around the
tune in recent years with alternate
versions and videos, a book and an
animated movie for kids.
This year’s big Christmas play: a
TV special for Apple, an accompa-
nying soundtrack album, and a new
take on a later yuletide composition
of Ms. Carey’s, “Oh Santa!” This
version features Ariana Grande andBYJOHNJURGENSENing growth is tied to the way its
sound pairs with holiday numbers
of any era. That versatility helped
“All I Want” proliferate along with
holiday playlists and the smart
speakers people use to shuffle
them. “She’ll be on pretty much any
Christmas playlist, whether it’s a
user-generated playlist or an algo-
rithmic one,” says George Howard,
a Berklee College of Music profes-
sor and industry veteran who man-
aged Carly Simon. The result is an
annual reignition of the “network
effect” that amplifies already popu-
lar content, he says.Ms. Carey also credits the efforts
of her “Lambily”—her family of
fans known as“Lambs”—for putting
“All I Want” on its path toward No.
1 with a social-media campaign that
encouraged people to stream the
song nonstop and purchase digital
downloads. “They did it. I wasn’t
sitting at home maniacally trying to
make that happen,” the singer says.
Music streams can translate to
eye-popping numbers, such as the
658 million YouTube views for the
original “All I Want” video, shot in
the style of a home movie when the
song was first released. But
streams—from services such as
Spotify and Pandora—generate less
revenue than payments and licens-
ing fees that add up each time a
tune gets played on the radio and
TV, and in stores, restaurants and
other venues. On that front, “All I
Want” likely generates many times
the amount of money it does from
streaming royalties, Mr. Howard es-
timates, with Ms. Carey getting paid
as a composer, producer and per-
former of the song.
Being the Queen of Christmas (a
moniker that arrived with the “All I
Want” onslaught of recent years)
means getting eye rolls from some
people. “Cynics and Scrooges,” she
calls them, who perceive her Christ-
mas routine as a strategy for cash-
ing in or compensating for a wan-
ing flow of new hits.
When she recorded her “Merry
Christmas” album in 1994, it ini-
tially seemed like a move more
suited to a singer on the wrong
side of their peak, not one who had
released her third album, the
smash “Music Box,” just a year
earlier and was still very much on
the way up. Recalls Ms. Carey in
the interview, “When I first did it I
thought, ‘Am I really doing a
Christmas song now? This feels
very premature to me.’”
Now it seems prescient. The
clockwork return of “All I Want”
has been signaled by Ms. Carey in
recent years with cheeky social-me-
dia posts that hit right after Hal-
loween. The early start is “an inter-
esting phenomenon that I’m not
even necessarily into,” says the
singer, who is reluctant to rush the
buildup to her favorite day of the
year. “I love every holiday. Not ev-
ery holiday—I’m not living for
Groundhog Day—but I’m just saying
I’m a very festive person.”‘Ireallydolivefrom
Christmas to Christmas.’
‘Mariah Carey's Magical
Christmas Special' premieres on
Apple TV+ on Friday.P
odcasts have become go-to en-
tertainment for families trav-
eling during the holidays, but
just because you’re forgoing the
wagon or 747 this year doesn’t
mean you need to skip the pod-
casts. Mankind has a history of
gathering ’round a fire (or living
room) to listen to a story and
watch it with our minds. As pod-
casts and audiobooks continue
their collision course with radio
dramas—now often with produc-
tion values that almost make them
movies without pictures—it’s the
perfect time to start an audio-
bingeing tradition.
These four holiday options
range from spare-no-detail analy-
sis of Hallmark movies to a series
that imagines how contemporary
media would have covered Jesus.‘Deck the Hallmark’
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.
Three men in South Carolina
host this wildly popular podcast
celebrating its third Christmas.They dissect every movie that
Hallmark Channel and its sister
network, Hallmark Movies & Mys-
teries, put out over the holiday
season—a hard-to-believe 40 de-
buts this year.
In the reviewing trio, Brandon
Gray loves the genre, Daniel Pan-
dolph puts up with it, and Daniel
Thompson can’t stand it. The epi-
sodes run 45 minutes to an hour,
usually four days a week, and un-
pack such things as the plot, scen-
ery, actors and Christmas orna-
ments. Regular segments include
“All the Feels”—about what, if
anything, emotionally over-
whelmed the reviewers. They also
regularly host stars of the films,
such as Andrew Walker, who is
more than happy to provide his
own candid thoughts on Hallmark
movies—including his own. (This
year, he stars in Hallmark’s
“Christmas Tree Lane.”)
This is a season of change at
Hallmark. After a dust-up last year
in which a commercial featuring a
same-sex wedding was pulled and
then returned to the air, parent
company Crown Media Family Net-
works says it expanded its efforts
to be “more inclusive of LGBTQ sto-
rylines, characters and talent, both
in front of and behind the camera.”
For example, “The Christmas
House,” which deals with a pair of
men looking to adopt, is the first
Hallmark movie to feature a same-
sex couple in lead roles.‘Eight Winter Nights’
Audible
In this three-hour audio drama,
free to subscribers of Amazon’s
Audible and available now, Rachel
misses out on Oz, the “new man”
at a Hanukkah party—and her best
friend nabs him. A year later, Oz
and said best friend are on the
outs, and she enlists Rachel to
nurse him back to health after a
leg injury. Oz instantly enlists
Rachel, a wordsmith, to help him
get his girlfriend back. “Give me
the good stuff. The words,” Oz
implores her. “The last time we
had a group dinner, you de-
scribed a brisket in such poeticterms it caused several men at
adjoining tables to weep openly.”
Writer Liz Maverick and perform-
ers Eva Kaminsky and Jason
Clarke are veterans of the ro-
mance-novel genre.‘Top Story Tonight: Jesus!’
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.
This podcast by Jane Wells,
who also works as a CNBC special
correspondent, imagines how so-
cial media and 21st-century news
organizations would have covered
the life of Jesus. Each episode
runs a little over half an hour, and
the first two, out now, focus on
the birth of Jesus—in other words,the Christmas story.
The series mixes interviews of
historians and theologians with
scripted drama—such as a “Dr.
Phil”-esque show hosted by Dr. Phi-
listine, who welcomes a man named
Joseph and a teenage woman
named Mary on his show to get to
the bottom of the idea that she’s
both pregnant and a virgin. “Well,”
Mary says, “I’m warning you: it’s a
strange and...wonderful story.” The
next four episodes will be released
for Easter.‘The Life and Adventures
of Santa Claus’
Audible
Over three hours, Tony Hale of
“Veep” fame reads the L. Frank
Baum book published in 1902, two
years after he began publishing his
“Oz” series. The Baum novel pres-
ents an origin story for the secular
side of Christmas that is starkly dif-
ferent than the one told in the pop-
ular stop-motion animation saga,
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”
In “Life and Adventures,” free to
Audible subscribers, the title char-
acter is rescued as a baby, and then
a wood nymph named Necile raises
him in a magical forest. Years later,
when he’s given a tour of the world
of man, he discovers capitalism and
mortality and decides to dedicate
himself to the “care of the children
of mankind and try to make them
happy” and repay the kindness
ISTOCKPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES shown to him by Necile.Ear Candy:
Audiobooks,
Podcasts
BYCHRISKORNELISMariah’s Christmas Gets Bigger
How the singer built ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ into an annual holiday juggernaut
Other positions in top 50Peak position per yearSources: Billboard (rank);
Nielsen Music/MRC Data (streams)Number of times the song ranked in
the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’: A Chart History
No. 150403020102012 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’Song hits No. 1
forfirsttime1500501002012 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’On-demand audio streams
in millionsMost-streamed holiday songs, 2019
On-demand audio and video
‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’
Mariah Carey‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’
Brenda Lee‘Jingle Bell Rock’
Bobby Helms‘Have A Holly Jolly Christmas’
Burl Ives‘Last Christmas’
Wham!308.9 million192.162.151.144.Jennifer Hudson, and a girl-group
production style that Ms. Carey
conceived as “a Supremes moment.”
“All I Want for Christmas Is
You” snowballed to 309 million on-
demand audio and video streams
last year, according to Nielsen Mu-
sic/MRC Data. That helped push it
to No. 1 on Billboard’s all-genre
Hot 100 songs chart for the first
time. It got streamed more than
chestnuts like Brenda Lee’s
“Rockin’ Around the ChristmasTree” and other latter-day stan-
dards like Wham!’s “Last Christ-
mas.” As of Thanksgiving this year,
her song had reappeared among
the more fleeting hits on the chart
(most recently at No. 14), where
it’s almost guaranteed to climb as
Christmas approaches.
In a year when musicians on ev-
ery level were forced to regroup,
Ms. Carey received a timely gift in
the form of her Apple deal. It cen-
ters on “Mariah Carey’s Magical