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Mariah Carey finally at #1

oldies76

oldies76

If you can believe it, Mariah Carey's 1994 Christmas classic, "All I Want For Christmas Is You" has reached #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart after a quarter century of close calls. This year, she makes it a week before Christmas. The first Christmas song to reach #1 on the Hot 100, since Alvin & the Chipmunks and their classic, "The Chipmunk Song" in December 1958!

I would assume Christmas music being on 24/7 on AC radio of late has helped this amazing achievement, her 19th #1 since "Vision of Love" in 1990, one away from the Beatles 20.

Also noteworthy on the National Hot 100, Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" is now at #3, a classic from the late 1950's!!

An interesting way to end the 2010's decade!
 
oldies76 said:
I would assume Christmas music being on 24/7 on AC radio of late has helped this amazing achievement
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Not necessarily. Radio airplay is only a portion of the Hot 100 chart. And AC airplay is a fraction of radio airplay.

"The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States."
 
RadioPatrol said:
Wow I never thought about that one though. I would have guessed "All I want for Christmas" would have been number 1 in the 1990's though.
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It even made national news headlines tonight, you don't see that too often.

Acc. to wikipedia, the song got as high as #12 on the Hot 100 airplay chart in Jan. 1995 and #6 on AC. The song was never issued as a CD single back then. The real success has been mostly since 2005, charting on top the recurrents thru '08. In 2017, it hit #9 on the 100, 2018 #3 and of course this year #1 for the first time.

It will be interesting if this can hold on at #1 the week after or what Brenda Lee will do.
 
oldies76 said:
It will be interesting if this can hold on at #1 the week after or what Brenda Lee will do.
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The fact that Christmas is a Wednesday will play a part here. Obviously all the listening to Christmas music stops around 5PM Wednesday. The chart covers Monday thru Sunday. So that means next week's chart will only have Christmas music for 2-1/2 days. The next 4-1/2 days will have regular format. So things will likely level off. It's why most currents-based format charts suspend publication during this time.
 
TheBigA said:
The fact that Christmas is a Wednesday will play a part here. Obviously all the listening to Christmas music stops around 5PM Wednesday. The chart covers Monday thru Sunday. So that means next week's chart will only have Christmas music for 2-1/2 days. The next 4-1/2 days will have regular format. So things will likely level off. It's why most currents-based format charts suspend publication during this time.
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Good point....didn't even take this into account. Mariah should celebrate good while she can, because "Dance Monkey" is lurking...
 
I know I'm in the minority but I like the version with Bieber. Really creative way to breathe new live into an older song. I can see her doing that again some day. Everyone knows how much she needs the money. She wrote that song by herself, so she gets all of the royalty.
 
oldies76 said:
Also noteworthy on the National Hot 100, Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" is now at #3, a classic from the late 1950's!!

An interesting way to end the 2010's decade!
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I don't think it's the same version. Something sounds different about it from the original.
 
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btw the song was co-written by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff. Carey is SESAC and Afanasieff is ASCAP. I believe Afanasieff wrote the music and recorded the backing track, and Carey wrote the words.

I like vchimpanzee's comment about the Brenda Lee song. Good to see people aware that versions commonly heard may not be the original hit recording. I don't know if she re-recorded it, but I suppose some research could determine if she did.

Sometimes there is a profound difference between the sound of the original mono 45 record and later mixes of the same original recording. Vinyl mastering engineers and folks preparing the mono master tape did a lot of things, that are not present on a 3 or 4 track tape of a session from that era.

I heard an example of this over the weekend-"I'd like to get to know you" Spanky and our gang.
The mono single and the stereo album version of the single are two completely different listening experiences. It is not the difference between mono and stereo. Instead it is because the mono single was mixed to mono with healthy amount of compression and EQ. The stereo album version of the single is lifeless, limp and thin sounding.


Furthermore, some artists added parts to the mix of the multi-track live as it was dubbed to the master.

Rod Argent on "She's not there":
“Almost every time you hear it, it’s not the original record,” he says. “As it went down to the one-track in mono in 1964, we put on a separate drum part. Now of course that only ever exists on the mix, so when people try and mix it in stereo, there’s a bit missing from the original single that was a hit. I know at least one of the stereo mixes that’s often used was just done by a novice trainee and it doesn’t have the drum part on it. That drives me crazy but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

So... if you want to make the oldsters happy- go to the trouble of finding and playing the correct version ;-)
 
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Greg Strickland said:
So... if you want to make the oldsters happy- go to the trouble of finding and playing the correct version ;-)
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Basically, find the original released 45 in near mint condition. eBay has them, if you're willing to fork out some money for shipping.
 
Greg Strickland said:
I like vchimpanzee's comment about the Brenda Lee song. Good to see people aware that versions commonly heard may not be the original hit recording. I don't know if she re-recorded it, but I suppose some research could determine if she did.
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What I heard on the radio sounded more jazz than rock and roll. I heard the rock and roll version on a TV commercial. She also sounded more mature on the radio. I think she was just a teenager when she first recorded the song.
Greg Strickland said:
I heard an example of this over the weekend-"I'd like to get to know you" Spanky and our gang.
The mono single and the stereo album version of the single are two completely different listening experiences. It is not the difference between mono and stereo. Instead it is because the mono single was mixed to mono with healthy amount of compression and EQ. The stereo album version of the single is lifeless, limp and thin sounding.


Furthermore, some artists added parts to the mix of the multi-track live as it was dubbed to the master.
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I've had some strange experiences with this song, which I like a lot.

In the car, I would hear some voices or maybe the instruments coming out of one speaker, and something else from the other speaker.

Using TiVo and iHeart, I would hear part of the performance but some of it was very quiet or missing. I reported this and it may have been fixed.
 
TheBigA said:
I know I'm in the minority but I like the version with Bieber. Really creative way to breathe new live into an older song. I can see her doing that again some day. Everyone knows how much she needs the money. She wrote that song by herself, so she gets all of the royalty.
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The 'festive' version. Off the same album that produced the hit single 'Oh, Santa!'. Personally I love the 1994 version more than the 2010 version.

And as for Rockin Around the Xmas Tree, LeAnn Rimes did do a cover. And so did Jessica Simpson & Rosie O'Donnell, which continues to get airplay. It's the only song I hear from Rosie's holiday albums.
 
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