Mariah Carey: All I Want for Christmas Is You (7") [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This 30th anniversary 7-inch puts the song on a proper single, with "Sleigh Ride" on the flip. It has spent 22 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, is certified Diamond in Canada and has sold more than 16 million copies.

This edition

• 7" single
• 30th anniversary edition

About the album

Christmas albums in 1994 were usually what singers made when the hits had dried up. Mariah Carey made hers straight after Music Box, wrote this one quickly with Walter Afanasieff, and accidentally gave the world a new standard.

It's an uptempo love song about wanting someone rather than presents, all sleigh bells, chimes, piano and stacked backing vocals, with a nostalgic 60s rock and roll feel. It reached No. 2 in the UK and Japan the first time around, then streaming turned it into an annual event, and in 2019 it finally hit No. 1 in the U.S., a record 25 years after it first came out. It is now the best-selling Christmas song in U.S. history. The flip side, "Sleigh Ride," keeps the jingle bells going.

The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2023, and The New Yorker called it one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon. We start stocking it in November, which by its own standards counts as remarkable restraint.

Also at Kops: more Mariah Carey on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19658891407), a reissue of the 1994 single.