Every year, debates break out around when it’s acceptable to give in to the season and let the tidal wave of Christmas tunes wash over you — but now it’s official: we’re all deep into the Christmas classics.
Christmas classics
Listeners don't seem afraid to dig out Mariah Carey’s Christmas cracker early, with All I Want for Christmas Is You breaking into Spotify's top 200 early in November — routinely racking up 2, 3 or 4 million streams before we even turned our calendars. The only Christmas song in the Spotify ‘one billion’ club, AIWFCIY is likely raking in $25,000+ per day in Spotify royalty fees — though Carey will have to split those with publishers, labels and other rights-holders.
Other hits like Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree and Wham’s Last Christmas aren’t too far behind either with 5.9m and 6.1m daily streams, respectively, for the most recent data point. Some non-festive favorites like Harry Styles’s As It Was and Sam Smith's Unholy are still lingering in the top 10, but non-seasonal songs are quickly becoming the minority — 6 of the top 10 spots are already occupied by Christmas classics.
Fun fact for holiday hitmakers: don’t be disheartened if your Xmas offering doesn’t take off immediately, All I Want For Christmas Is You only reached number 1 in the US in 2019, 25 years after its release in 1994.
