Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ Was Voted Most Annoying Song at Holidays

Mariah Carey’s Christmas staple took a step back this year, digging up some other moments in recent years.

December 22, 2023, 8:41pm

Mariah Carey performs ÒAll I Want For Christmas is YouÓ from her 25th Anniversary album reissue of Merry Christmas during The Late Late Show with James Corden, on Thursday, December 19, 2019.

With the joke about Mariah Carey being thawed out after Halloween ends becoming a reality, the Christmas season arrived with a few surprises. The sounds of the season have fully taken over your favorite streaming services and radio stations. One of the top songs every season is Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” a record-breaker and favorite for many at this time of year. But recent years we’ve seen the annual staple take some hits. Most recently, we saw Christmas favorite Brenda Lee and “Rockin’ Around the Christmastree” reach number one for the first time in its existence. Elsewhere, voters in the U.K. showed they see a few other songs worthy of being number one. Wham’s “Last Christmas” became #1 for the time in the U.K. in 2023, seeming to follow in the footsteps of another U.K. fan vote in 2019.

In that poll, conducted by Huawei in the U.K., named Carey’s iconic version of the Christmas classic as the most annoying of the season. It topped several British-centric choices according to Variety, like Band-Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” or Wham’s “Last Christmas” at numbers two and five.

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Thank you for your sweet note, @MariahCarey! Wishing you the merriest Christmas, too! 💕 -Brenda pic.twitter.com/Md0w7vQYpc
— Brenda Lee (@BrendaLeeMusic_) December 7, 2023

Some American songs that rounded out the top 10 include The Jackson 5’s “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby,” and the classic “Jingle Bells” by the Andrews Sisters.

Surprisingly missing from the list is Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” a staple of holiday radio and a song that has been demonized for years and alleged to have caused a rise of suicides in Japan at the holidays.

Still, Carey’s presence at the top could be surprising to some fans of the song. The song is the highest-charting holiday song in 60 years since its release in 1994. Since that point, Carey has earned more than $60 million in royalties from just the one song and reportedly earns $500,000 every year, not counting licensing fees or streaming costs.

Carey celebrated the 25th anniversary of the song by going on a tour themed after the classic Christmas song and her album, Merry Christmas. She also released a new video cut for the song to celebrate the anniversary and kick off the Christmas season.

“Kicking off the festivities with a brand new video cut for ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You (Unreleased Footage)’. Hope you like it!!!” Carey wrote on social media. Despite the new top 10 and voting, it would seem plenty of fans still love the Christmas classic and the voice that Carey brings to it.