“All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and let alone fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your two divas of diversion, here to whistle, register melisma our way into your Yule Tide hearts and minds. That's an all timer. I'm Alex Tag and I'm Jordan Runtuck and Jordan. Today we are continuing our holiday programming by talking about the Evil Twin to the Monster Mash, a Christmas song that, while a relative newcomer to the cannon, rises every year from its seasonal grave to dominate the last two months of the pop charts. That's right, we're talking about Mariah Carries Deathless Anthem. All I Want for Christmas is You. My version to roughly of all Christmas music is well documented, and I'm also not the world's biggest Mariah carry fan. But before the pitchforks come out, I don't dislike her stuff. I just don't really vibe with it, and I've endeared far too many terrible coffee shop and garage rock covers of this song to truly, you know, deeply love it. But I can stand aside admire. As Ian Home famously says of the titular alien in Ridley Scott's nine Magnum Opus, I admire its purity. It is a perfect pop song, and I never want to hear it again in my life. No, it's so good. It's a great it's perfect well, it's perfect, perfect pop song. Very happy Mariah carry Stands. Don't Come at Me is a perfect pop song that I have heard a great number of times in my life. Jordan's You. I mean, there truly are two tons of people in this world, those who never want to hear that song again and those who can't hear it enough. And I'm in the latter category. I absolutely love it. I played all year round when I was when I was in high school. You should drive around listening to it in the summer at high volumes because it made me so happy. I mean, it's an updated version of my beloved sixties Wall of Sounds stuff. I mean, it's tied for my favorite Christmas stuff with the Ronnie Specter Phil Specter Christmas album and actually wonderful Christmas time gets past two. We should have done a Wonderful Christmas Time. Damn it, I would rather eat a bullet. Really, yeah, I hate that song so much. Happy Christmas War Is Over is also grading, but better. There are two kinds of people in this world, wonderful Christmas time people and happy Christmas wars over people. And that makes a lot of sense that where we both fall on that. Jordan, tell us about your history with this song, specifically your musical history with it and your romantic history, which are often intertwined very much. I'll always intertwined. Yes. Once, in high school, prior to love actually coming out, I might add, I transcribed this entire piece of music by year to try to get our high school jazz band to play it in some drastically misguided attempt to win back one of the many girls who broke my heart. Didn't work, mostly because the band director wouldn't go along with it, which, in the end probably worked in my favor, probably is doing me a favor. But I got over my heartbreak by learning the ins and outs of this masterpiece. And it is a masterpiece. That's all I can say about it. It is a perfect song. I love how those elaborate backing vocals that almost become bullieved and uh it's so perfect. Oh my god, I can't wait to talk more about this well, from the traumatizing circumstances of Carrie's life that contextualized the song to the still raging battle over its songwriting credits to the other Queen of Christmas battling Carry for the Crown. Here's everything you didn't know about. All I want for Christmas is you or Maurah. Carry was decidedly not at a cross road. She was one of the richest entertainers of the world. Carry and Doherty rough childhood in Huntington, New York, where racist neighbors poisoned to the Carry family dog and set fire to their car because her parents, Patricia and Alfred Roy Carey, were an into racial couple. God, that's up there with another traumatic story from a beloved Christmas crooning icon. That King Cole when he moved into a some very high end neighborhood in Los Angeles. I forget what it was exactly. The neighbors all got together and came to his door and said, I think that like literally all standing on his lawn. In my head, they all have pitchforks. I don't think they did uh, and said, you know, we don't want any undesirables in this neighborhood. And he said, well, if I see any, I'll let you know. And somebody, I think it was the same house in the same neighborhood, left the burning cross on that King Cole's front. Jes think of that and the sund me here Christmas song Good Lord, Yeah, I mean Patricia's family disowned her over the marriage and Car's mom wow, and Carry remembers being bullied about it in school, little racist Long Island Uh school. People would hurl slurs at her. What did she oh? Yeah, it was like a big sticking point for her early in her career when people would be like just another white girl trying to sing black. She was like, people burned my family's car. Anyway. Her folks split up when she was three years old, and she didn't see much of her dad. Her mom worked several jobs to support the family, which meant that Carrie spent a lot of her time alone. Money was obviously scarce. She once received a wrapped up orange from her mother for Christmas, just so that she would have something to open. Mariah Carry has talked about Christmas is at her house being rough. She said, I always wanted Christmas to be perfect, and I always looked forward to the holidays, and then I had this incredibly dysfunctional family that would ruin it every year, not my mom. My mom would try to make it fun, but we didn't have a lot of money, so sometimes she would wrap up fruit or whatever it was that she could afford. And I was like, when I grow up, I'm never gonna let that happen. I'm gonna make Christmas perfect every year, which is keep keep that in mind you through the story. She began singing at the age of three and would imitate the Verdy arias that her mother, who studied Opera Juilliard, would sing at home, but Carrie had a complicated relationship with Patricia. In her memoir, she describes nearly drowning at a beach when she was seven, with her mom almost completely failing to notice. She also recounts a time when her mother screamed at her, you should only hope that one day you become half the singer I am, after they were singing together during a car ride. Is she close to her still like that? Do they have any relationship? I don't know, you know, again, not to make all the Carry people like come at me, because they will. But um, she's a bit of an unreliable narrator. And I think with this memoir came out that people like took it all as the gospel truth. And I don't know how much of it is actually accurate, but I think she's somewhat mended their relationship. That Carrie started working as a demo singer while in high school and eventually moved to Manhattan, where she trained as an esthetician and lived in a one bedroom apartment between two to four roommates. Sleeping couch, yes, but either way it sounds rough, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. And the next chapter, Mariah Carry's origin story is about as well trod as Batman. You right at this point, and that's true. She was doing background vocals for a singer named Brenda k Star and she went with her to a party in December and managed to slip her demo tape to the head of Columbia Records, Tommy Mottola. Tommy mott Yeah, uh, I can be mean to him Italian and he was yes, yes, uh. Motola listened to this demo tape. In this limo on the ride home and immediately headed back to the party Cinderella style, but missed carry and spent the next two weeks looking for her, before engaging in a bidding war with another label for her and eventually signing her. Gary's self titled debut album came out when she was twenty one years old. It's spent eleven weeks at number one, spawned four number one singles, sold fifteen million copies worldwide, and won her two Grammys, including Best New Artist. Kerry eventually married Matola, twenty years her senior, whom she began dating during the making of her first record. She married him in the intervening years. She would co write and co produce her second studio album, Emotions, bringing back a guy named Walter Afana Sef from her debut whose name you should remember for the next few minutes. She also recorded an MTV Unplugged appearance and worked with I Found a se on her third record, Music Box, which remains her best seller, one of the best selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales of over twenty eight million copies. Those are A C D C. Michael Jackson numbers. People forget what a big deal Mariah was. I'm surprised that that was the one. That Emotions was always the one I liked more than music Box. I'm surprised that that's the one. What's the big song on music Box? I don't know. I didn't listen to any of this stuff. Really, I was sending to jazz and not having sex. But yeah, this is a fantasy of guy. He is a big deal. He co produced and co wrote many of Mariah's hits, including One Sweet Day, which I think had the title of the longest running number one single until very recently. Uh and also hero Oh that was the big hitoff music Box. Was here on recover of Nielson, Your Beloved Harry Nielsen without You. Alright, fine, I still like Emotions better, but whatever. H He also won a Grammy Award for co producing Selene Dion's My Heart Will Go On. We should point out that we have not been planting Titanic references in these shows leading up to the Titanic episodes that were made. I I will become the James Cameron of podcasting for this Titanic episode. It is. It may be a three parter. I'm still in the midst of writing it. Speaking of other megalo maniacal man chaining creatives against their will in a gilded palace of their own making. Tommy Mottola would write in his own memoir that neither his therapist nor several of his friends would approve of him marrying he twenty years his junior. Carry, but hey, that's Nascar baby. That did not bode well for the marriage. Carry says that she married Matola not really for love, but for protection from her own family, which I guess meant people trying to capitalize on her career. But um, he took the Rapunzel route, installing her in a multimillion dollar mansion in upstate Bedford, New York, filled with guards, cameras, and intercombs. And she also writes her memorial lot how Tommy Mantola was uncomfortable with her biracial identity and constantly worked to frame her as a white adult contemporary artist rather than R and B one or an R and B artist. That's why she ultimately left Sony right, was that she was trying to collaborate with like Puff Daddy and Odi b and and Tommy Motts was like, I'm racist. Go back to singing the Bad Finger song. And get back in your room. I mean, I'm sure there were many reasons, but I be that was a big one, certainly. Yes, Mariah began referring to the house they shared as sing sing as in the famous prison in Austin in New York, which I imagine was just down the street from Bedford. She was constantly watched and never allowed to leave hunt her own, and she's recounted being in the home studio they're recording with Rapper the Brat and having to scheme up how they would sneak out of the house in one of the cars that Mariah owned to make a run to Burger King for fries. She said, I longed for someone to come kidnap me back then. This is according to the New York Post. I used to fantasize about that a lot. And according to the paper, she also used the phrase a private hell to describe their marriage. This is all very reminiscent of another Christmas queen, Ronnie Specter and her relationship with Phil spect So this is all the background that went into one of the greatest Christmas songs of all time. But Zoolander voice, Why male Models, Why Christmas? And Billboard interview a fantasy if Walter Fauna stef says, twenty years ago, Christmas music and Christmas albums by artists weren't the big deal that they are today. Back then, you didn't have a lot of artists with Christmas albums. It wasn't a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs. Carrie said at the time, I'm a very festive person and I love the holidays. I've sung Christmas song since I was a little girl. I used to go Christmas caroling to do Good Morning America. She said, I just wrote the song out of love for Christmas and really loving Christmas music. And then she told Hot nine at the job, I wrote it from a place of what would my little girl self right for this song, which is possibly getting at the closest to what that song is actually represents for her, which is like the childhood idealization of Christmas. But she was probably just, at least in the press, it seems like she was just kind of towing the party line in the time. As we mentioned earlier, Tommy Motts didn't like her leaning into the R and B direction, and Christmas was his favorite holiday. He wrote in his memoir, so he wanted Carry's next record to be a Christmas record. There's a commonly repeated anecdote about when he pitched her this idea, she said, what are you trying to do? Turn me into Connie Francis, And then, because he's a huge jerk, he in his memoir of that moment that he nearly laughed in her face, adding how the hell does she even know who Connie Francis is? God, Connie Francis for anyone who didn't grow up in the fifties like me. Uh. She was a fifties early sixties pop singer, young enough to have been in the rock and roll vanguard. Wikipedia surprisingly describes her as the Queen of rock and Roll, which is third but she was more into the easy listening stuff and they almost positioned her like the female Dean Martin with all of her Italian songs. Yeah, I remember her being like the like the iteal lady. It's like her and like Louis Prima, who like because it's like my uncle's listen to. Uh. The point is a Christmas album is not what a young artist does. I mean, that's up there worth releasing a greatest hits album, you know, as a sign that you're being put out to pasture or to finish your record contract before you renegotiate and just throw out a bunch of Christmas covers and call it an album. New Christmas songs were seen as something of a risk, because you know, people want the hits. They want the old standards that are imbued with all sorts of memories, both cultural and personal. They don't want new Christmas songs. In an interview with w magazine just last month, Mariah said, the idea of me doing a Christmas album at all came from the record company. It was very early in my career, and I thought it was a little earlier for me to be doing that, but I was just like, wow, I love Christmas. I had some very sad Christmas is as a child, but I always try to find the bright light there. So, with our marching orders in place, a fantasy and carry started working on a Christmas record. We started working on the Christmas album. Walter told Billboard. This is about three years after we first started working together. There are always three different areas that Christmas music goes into. He continued, this is a fascinating breakdown. I love this. There are traditional Christmas songs, fun katie songs like Rudolph or Frosty, and then you have your love songs like Chestnuts, frosting in open Fire, I'll be Home for Christmas, all those kind of songs. So he decided to write one of each. The first two songs they wrote, or Miss You Most at Christmas Time is a semi ballad, and then Jesus Born on this day. Maria Carry had a great aunt who's confusingly was called Nana Reese on her dad's side of the family, and this woman was a minister at a Baptist church in Harlem, and Carry rode in her memoir that some of her earliest experiences tied to religion were connected to going to these church services. And she's talked about loving gospel artists like Shirley Caesar and Edwin Hawkins, and half the songs on that Christmas album are religious, which is another thing that I think people tend to write out about its history. Anyway, after knocking out those two a funna sief and Carry started to write what Mariah wanted to do and what Tommy wanted to do his words, which was a phil specter old rock and roll sixties sounding Christmas song Jordan's you gotta tell us about the Phil Specter Christmas record, which you have mentioned as one of your faves. Oh yeah, it's incredible and as Phil Specter adding his wall of sound trademark style to almost completely Christmas standards Christmas Baby, Please Come Home as original done by Darlene Love amazing. You know the ron ats isn't I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus on there? Yeah, I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus. I can really hear how Michael Jackson kind of got a lot. I mean, I know James Brown was always cited as an inspiration for Michael Jackson, but you can see Ronnie Specter. I didn't know this until I interviewed um Lusen to Williams. She actually cued me in on it. But like she was talking about she did this Christmas covers record she did or she did I'll Be Home for Christmas, and she, because she's amazing, had gone through and found like the old original verse to that song that was like cut for being too depressing, and that's the one that she included. Um But she was telling me that like all of these r and B and blues and early funk artists all put out Christmas records, like James Brown has one called Santa Please Come to the Ghetto. There's like a Lightning Hopkins Christmas record which is Otis Reading and Carla Thomas one yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny to me that, like, you know, there's this whole you know, if you grew up white, you listen like Bing Crosby and but there's this whole, rich tradition of black popular Christmas music that's out there. So interesting. I mean, yeah, this album is great, and it's the original press It was released on the day that JFK was assassinated, so it didn't sell that well. That was kind of a failure, which is you know what Phil Specter deserves it Jesus Christ being sympathetic towards another actual music industry monster. Yes, but copies of the original nineteen three pressing are selling for hundreds of dollars. You know what, I don't um share. It was present at these sessions with Sonny Bono and they sang backing vocals on it. Um my favorite. I was lucky enough to interview Ronnie Specter a few times, and she told me how Shara would say, Arounnie, you know Phil. Share kind of gleaned pretty quickly that Phil was not a great guy and wasn't really treating Ronnie all that well, and was already in this early stage of their relationship being extremely possessive, and Share said, well, you know, why why do you Phil? He's not He's not really a great looking guy. And Ronnie got all defensive and went, oh, Sonny's no prize, sweetie. O. Uh. Brian Wilson was also uh present at sessions for the Phil Specter Christmas album. At least he's called it his favorite album of all time, and he tried to play piano on it, but was shot down because the official reason is that Phil thought his piano playing wasn't very good. But Brian Wilson worshiped Phil Specter and the Beach Boys were starting New Eclipse Phil's dominance on the charts, so I think he was putting his young, you know, up start in his place. Also, the Beach Boys Christmas album has some tremendous songs on it came out in sixty four. Really, they do a beautiful version of Blue Christmas Three Kings. I think they do an acapella version of Old Lang Syne. Yeah, that's a beautiful album. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. Anyway, Carrie and ifan a Se tell slightly differing versions of how they wrote this song. I started playing some rock and roll piano and started boogie woogie ng in my left hand. Jordan, you want to gi us a little boogie woggie. I actually can't really do boogie. That's a tricky I only go like Lady Madonna, like yeah, there you go. Yeah, that kind of thing. The heavy left hand walking bass style is beyond my skill set. R I p. Julie Lewis another actual monster. Yeah. He used to start interviews by putting guns on the table. Uh. Didn't do that with me though, Thank god. That sort of piano pattern inspired Mariah to come up with the melodic I don't Know Christmas. And then they started singing and playing around with this rock and roll boogie song, and he says that immediately came out to be the nucleus of what would end up being All I Want for Christmas is You. But Mariah Carey has basically started writing a fantasy out of the genesis of this song, which I think is un chill of her. Starting in two thousand seventeen, I guess she told Billboard, I am proud of this song that I basically wrote as a kid on my little cassio keyboard to Cosmo in she said, I just sat down, decorated a little tree and put on It's a Wonderful Life and tried to get into that mood. And I sat down in this small room with a keyboard and started doing little melodies and stuff. In the Amazon Music documentary Mariah Carey Is Christmas The Story of All I Want for Christmas, You, she said, Actually, I put on It's a Wonderful Life downstairs and you could hear it throughout the house. And I went into the small room and there was a little keyboard in there, and I started playing in that same chunk. Though she mentions Walter A as someone she took the song to after she composed it to co produce this documentary is hilarious. She does this whole interview reclining on a Chase lounge, which is when I saw her do her a trunk added Christmas concert at the com Theater a few years ago. I feel like she was delivered on stage by shirtless, greased up man in a reclining position. If I recall, yes, uh, they really doubled down on her being into Christmas in that documentary. The first ninety seconds are all these industry people like Randy Jackson talking about how Chris because she is and you don't we believe you. Yeah, I don't know. Man, far be it for me to say she's not actually into Christmas? But like, the very industry cynical part of me was, like, this is like a thing that happens every year that you don't actually have to make any new music. You don't have to like go out on a limb anymore. You can just wait for this song to tack back up and make you twelve million dollars a year or whatever it actually earns her and then write a children's book about like she just keeps flogging it and anyway, I don't know, yeah, stuff to say. I don't know if it's it's may have started as a cash grab image adjustment thing for Tommy Montola, but she really embraced it. So either she's justifiably extremely proud of it, or maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. But also, I mean, I don't know, you find people that have tragic upbringings, they tend to be really into Christmas. You know, it's a chance for them to rewrite their childhood. I guess, like, I'm not trying to take anything away from right. It just bothers me that she's like trying to got this dude out of the narrative of it because like, and that's what he mentions. I mean, he talks about like if you ask her who wrote hero or with her or who wrote all of these other songs, she says, Walter Afana, Steve, But for some reason, this song is the one that she is now. Like just to w magazine last month, she was she just said, I was up late walking around this house where I was living with my first ex husband, and I had a keyboard and I'm by no means a piano player, but I can plug out chords when I need to, and just doesn't mention him. She just has cut him out of the narrative of this song. So I don't know, maybe it's something that is so personal to her about correcting terrible in her childhood that and you know, maybe it started from her too maybe she was sitting around late at night and started writing this and brought in a half finished shoot to Walter. And that kind of stuff happened with Lenon McCartney all the time too, So I don't know. It could be a combination of both. We're going with a final Steve's version. He was at the piano and carry was seen. He told Business Insider in that my first reaction was that sounds like somebody doing voice scales. Are you sure that's what you want? Wait? Yeah, yeah, it's basically a C scale. This is like when Phil Spector held the Romans at gunpoint while he played his old songs to them over and over again for hours. John Lennon too, he did that thing where he shot the ceiling of the studio and John said, all right, Phil, if you're gonna kill me, kill me, but don't mess with my ear as I need him. Yeah, And still people leapt to his defense. They were like, he couldn't have possibly shot that person. Oh, I don't think anyone left his defense? Uh yeah? And that yeah, So it's a C major scale essentially. It's surprising to me that I finacy if didn't think this was a good idea because I distinctly remember taking ap music theory classes and comp classes in high school and they said that the best or catchiest everyone to find best, which I guess in this case is catchiest. Melodies don't have a lot of jumps, but the notes are very near to one another, and they just kind of like over the rainbow as that big jump octave jump. Aside from that octave jump, the notes are very close together. Yeah, that's why they say they start spangled banners there or the nationally the national anthem is one of the songs and have all of these amateur singers do it because it's kind of big jumps in it. But Carrie persisted and they kept at it, and a Finacy told Business Insider she would sing a melody and I would do a chord change. It was almost like a game of ping pong back and forth until we had it and I finally you've added to Billboard. That one went very quickly. It was an easier song to write than some of the other ones. It was very formulaic because not a lot of chord changes. Yeah, it's like an old It's almost like an ice cream shop chord changes or bookie WEEKI chord changes. That part of it took maybe an hour, and then I went home. And you've also read fifteen minutes possibly to write Yeah, yeah, it seems plausible. I fought to see if mince fewer words talking to as Cap, he said, at the time, I thought it was overly simple, and I didn't like it because music people know, you know, as we said, it's like it's like a practice interview. I probably should have studied this before. I impressed your winging it, so, he told Billboard. I tried to make it a little more unique, putting in some special chords that you don't really hear a lot of which made it unique and special. And the backing vocals in a lot of ways, competing with the lead vocal line makes it a lot more interesting too. Well. I mean that's the way modern songwriting credits work is. It's it's lyrics and vocals and then everything else. And he programmed everything on this song himself. We'll talk about that in a second. But there's a mildly viral theoretical analysis of this song at Slate by a guy named Adam rad See. He plays this song in the lineage of the Great American Songbook writing, Uh, he said, I count at least thirteen distinct chords at work in All I Want for Christmas, You, including what he called the most Christmas e chord of all, a minor sub dominant or four chord in the major key with an added six. So is that this? Yes? So what it does is the classic Beatles move, which is you have it's in its home key. The chord goes major four and then minor four back to one. Yeah, so four minor chord with the six on it. Let me put that chord in context of the song. Yeah, So there it is, and you will recognize that from every Beatles song ever. Yes, we love the plague minor cadence. The amen cadence afford to one is the playgal minor plague. Yeah, and that's the Beatles thing. I mean, Paul has called that one of his favorite chord progressions. Um, yeah, let's let it be anyway a funa. Steve continued to Billboard. For the next week or two. Mariah would call me and say, well, what do you think about this bit. We would talk a little bit until she got the lyrics all nicely coordinated and done, and then we just waited until the sessions began, which were in the summer of ninety four when we got together in New York and started recording, and that's when we first hear her at the microphone singing and the rest is history. A Finna Steve told Variety in that they first attempted the song with a live band. He said, at the time of the record the Christmas Album, we assembled a group of mighty musicians like Dan Huff and Greg Fillion, Hanes, and I think there might have been Nathan East who was a famously one of Stevie Wonders bassists on bass, and Omar Hakim, who's a legendary New York City like session drummer, ninja guy. And he said, most of the songs in the album we're old school, very Ronnie Specter, Phil Specter, gospel like, so there was a lot of live musician application to this. We did other songs during the sessions with the band, but there was never a version of all I Want for Christmas as you with a band. I think we might have tried it and it just didn't sound as good. So he programmed this whole thing on his computer. Everything on there is canned. That's nuts to me. I always assumed there was a whole wall of sound style production with a bunch of instruments in the studio. But yeah, it looks like the only other person playing on the track list thing is Dan huff on guitar and backing vocalists. I guess all the horns and stuff are since too, which I always thought that sounded pretty real. But I mean, the guy must have been the guy must have had like a massive grade computer that's sounding that good, like the early nineties simulation software. Since we're not that good. It's all MIDI stuff like passio keyboard style. Despite the fact they recorded it in August, A Fantasy told The New York Post, we had Christmas trees and lights brought into the studio to get us in the mood. There was even talk of bringing in some snow at one point, but we didn't go with that. Thank god. They kept the temperature really cold in the studio, too terrible for a singer who's half their thing is like dolphins. She grew up caroling. You know, I guess that energy. I guess we have myr eyes. Favorite line of the song is I won't even wish for snow, because she says that Amazon mini documentary. I always wish for snow because I always wanted to be a winter wonderland. The lyrics and that song are actually pretty clever in the way that they can be so multi purpose, and Walter and Fantasy explained she created a lyric that probably to this is the only up tempo Christmas love song. I think people like this positive love song because it's interchangeable. Anybody can sing it to anybody. It's about everybody, and it could only mean one thing, from father to child, or mother to child, or wife to husband. It's just all I want for Christmas? Is you a fantasy time with Carrie ended messily? Uh? He told Variety. When you're married to the chairman of the company and you get a divorce, he was not married to Tommy Monts. That was, of course, alright, Carrie. It wasn't a civil parting of the ways. And I had an exclusive contract and obligation with Sony Music. I had no alternative. I had no way of leaving the company and running off into the sunset with Mariah. So that seems to suggest Walter, you got a wife and children. So being under a legally binding contract, he said, I had to stay, and he continues in that Variety interview talking really with a lot of sadness. It seems about the oddly specific way in which Carry has persisted in writing him out of this song and only that song. He said, I own it. Were equal co writers. Yet I can't call her. She doesn't call me. She continues to deny the existence of a co writer on this and he added that he's gotten death threats from Mariah Carey stands on social media whenever he just brings up the fact that he is correctly a co writer on the song as literally, any small amount of googling will tell you, Uh, I don't know, man, Well, I have another depressing code for the song. The music video was directed by Diane Martell, who later directed the Robin Thick video for Blurred Lines. Mariah did not have the best time making that video. She told Pop Sugar, I was actually in the snow. That's not something that was created. It was freezing in that one piece ensemble and my hair was frozen, and I remember it like it was yesterday. And uh, probably didn't help matters that Tommy Mantola plays the Santa in the video, which probably made it less fun. Oh, Yeah, God, that guy karious Christmas album wasn't even pubblicized until the middle of October, by which point her duet with Luther Van Dress on the cover of the Diana Ross and Lionel Richie hit Endless Love was already stratospheric. The album dropped and the single dropped right before Halloween, which is kind of a well, I guess that's kind of the standard time to drop Christmas songs, and she's she's held to it. You were talking about seasonal creep, She starts tweeting about this song on Halloween. Yeah, I mean, that's what you know. November one Department stores, the song did not top the charts, which is shocking to me considering the life it's gone On the half, it peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary and number twelve and the Hot one A Play charts in January. Yeah, the album's performance was even stranger, which is a testament to a fantasy assertion that Christmas music was not doing big numbers at the time. It debuted number thirty on the US Billboard. Two hundred sold copies in its first week, which is huge today, But for Mariah Carey in there was nothing, you know. It became the second best selling holiday album that year, with a total of one point eight million copies sold. And we'll get to the best selling Holiday record of a second. But the record did become Carrie's first number one album in Japan. Friend of the Pod Japan never gets sold, No, it doesn't. It's so huge in Japan that sometimes Mariah would have to perform it in springtime in summer, whenever she was there, she had to bust out all the one for Christmas as you, regardless of whether or not it's Christmas time. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Yeah, Jordan's I know you probably you've read this before, but for dramatic effect, could you, in any universe have possibly guessed what the best selling holiday record of was? Yes, because it is a big favorite for some very dear people in my life. And I also interviewed him last year about Christmas so interesting. Well, folks, it is Kenny G's Miracles, the Holiday album. Best selling Holiday record became the first Christmas album to reach number one on Billboard since Mitch Miller's Holiday sing Along with Mitch in January two, and the first instrumental album to top the top album chart since Vangeliss Chariots of Fire soundtrack in two, and the first Christmas instrumental album ever to top the album chart. What did Kenny say about this when you talk to him? I mean he doesn't like it's the one that the Silent nightcover comes off of, right, Yes, I think so, like news broadcast playing in the background. It's like a topic. No no, no, that's Simon and Garf. Uncle. Uh tell me about Kenny g the miracle Christmas miracle. I mean, yeah, it's just like a supernatural phenomenal. I didn't even want to do it. I think Clive Davis made him do it, and he was Clive, I'm Jewish, like I don't really care. I was like, no, no, no, Um, he doesn't know. I don't know. Oh my god. Walter Funnas did the arrangements on this bad scans. Walter funnasy if you Christmas Ninja did my heart will go on this guy's He's made some He's made some change. Uh. Carry's Merry Christmas record has sold five point eight million copies in the US. The album that the single came off of that Kenny g record has sold eight million. The best selling Christmas album of all time in the States, by the way, is Elvis's Christmas Record. Now, this whole thing gets a little thorny because there's the pretty and post sounds and arrows, which affects how Billboard tabulates sales. But Carrie's album is after Kenny's in pretty much every one of these charts. The business of Christmas music is wild. I just want to add the oft repeated anecdote that Paul McCartney, one of the few billionaire rock people earns upwards of half a million dollars a year solely on royalty is for wonderful Christmas time. But well enough about the album. The album is dead. Nobody listens to albums anymore. What about All I Want as a single one of the champions, if not the champion. All I Want certified diamond in one, which is ten million plus in sales. It is the twelve best selling physical single of all time with sixteen million copies, just under seen dealons My Heart Will Go On, which surely warms Walter Rafana Sief's art that the other thing he co produced beat out the single that Mariah's trying to tell people he didn't help right, and it was the first holiday ringtone to be certified double platinum by the r I dub l A remember Ringtones. Part of that helped by the fact that the song returns to the charts every year, like Clockwork, which is not entirely just up to carry tweeting it. Rob Stringer, the chairman of Sony Music Group, told The New York Times, in every year, we focus a campaign around new ways to market All I Want for Christmas, because the opportunities for people to hear this perennial classic just seems to grow and grow because you're making them, dude, That's why they do that. This year, it re entered the top one hundred in the U s iTunes chart a few hours after midnight on November one. Truly, like Clockwork, the song was still not a number one hit though until twenty nineteen. It finally topped the Billboard Hot one December nineteen, after thirty five cumulative weeks on the chart, making it the slowest climb to the top spot in the charts history, a record surpassed recently by Glass Animals heat Waves, which took fifty nine weeks to get to the top slot. I don't know anything about that song. All I want also broke the record for the longest chronological trip to the number one position, taking twenty five years to do so. Wow. Yeah. And it's only the second time in the sixty plus years of Hot one hundred history that a Christmas song hit number one on the main chart, and these first to do so since the Chipmunks Christmas song in This Is and This Is. I know these records don't mean anything, but when you hear them all stacked up, they do. They are crazy and these are my favorite. Carry's record of having the most number one songs for a solo artist on the Hot one hundred is now at nineteen. I believe she's just under the Beatles and she has cumulatively with this song, spent eighty weeks at number one as an artist. And finally, since it was both the last number one single of and the first number one single Ofies, he became the first artist in history to top the Billboard chart in four separate decades es two thousands, two thousand tens, and the two thousand twenties, and then Sunrise Sunset. The song broke yet another record the first week of January of twenty by becoming the first song to completely fall off the Hot one hundred from the number one position. Incredible, truly the entire rich tapestry of human experience encompassed in a Christmas single. Although it was obviously a huge hit, the song was helped by its plot centric inclusion in two thousand threes Love Actually a funeste who told Billboard that Kerry rarely allows her songs to be used in film or TV, says he doesn't know why she relented for that film in particular, saying I think she just had a fondness for the movie. She liked the script, and she liked the actors. I'm sure she thought it's a young girl singing it. It's the right time. Yeah. Richard Curtis, the writer and director of that movie, said that he was obsessed with that song and he played it over and over when he was working on the script and feeling stuck. I saw some one of those like feel old yet type like click batty things recently that did you write it? No? I didn't not this time. Well, it wasn't a feel old thing, but it was like a violent math type piece that said that the little boy in that movie is just five years younger than Cura Nightley. Oh yeah, yeah, Well, how do all those chart positions translate in terms of cold hard cash? Well, so glad you asked. Sten studied by the Economist found that Carry makes about two point five million a year from this song Suck It McCartney. The song had made sixty million as of sixteen, which suggests that since then she's made a further twelve point five million dollars since then, not including two which means this year it could top seventy five million, which means half of that as half of the songwriting team. That means that song has made a hundred and fifty million dollars. That's up there with Margot Rhodaville. Well, I think the jury is still out on how well carries Mariah. Menu at McDonald's, which unfolded over the last twelve days of Christmas one did exactly. There's at least room for one other uh avenue of expansion into the Christmas Empire, gustatorially speaking, at least at some point in the mid adds. A farmer named Angus told the UK tabloid The Daily Express that the two thousand goats on his farm produced more milk while listening to All I Want for Christmas. By contrast, wizards, I wish it could be Christmas every day, which slaps slowed down their production, and the Christmas Song by the Chipmunks stopped it entirely. Which else scans fannaty You've told the New York Post when confronted by this fact, I think Mariah should endorse a brand of Christmas goat cheese made from the milk of those goats, and I would obviously want half the profits. He may get his wish well. Maria parlayed the song's success into her self appointed position as the Queen of Christmas. More on that in a minute, and is in fact currently flogging a children's book that you mentioned earlier, co written with MICHAELA Angela Davis, called The Christmas Princess, which is a Cinderella esque children's tale about a girl named Little Maria when they're landed on that who loves to sing about Christmas. My favorite album title of all time is Me I Am Maria the Elusive Shantouse. Yes, God, that was called that. Mariah told USA today that there are rules that she sets during the holiday. If you're in her Queen of Christmas queendom, I don't care who it is. The kids, if five guests, whatever, nobody is allowed to play or watch anything other than a Christmas related thing. If I wake up in the middle of the night and walk into the living room and the music isn't playing and the lights on on, I just can't handle it. Do we think she's being funny? Or yes, charitably I do, But are you just gonna ambiently noodle on the piano? That's like Mr Rogers. As far as legally being determined, The Queen of Christmas carry just ran into a stumbling block this year. Her application to trademark the aforementioned phrase, along with Princess Christmas and q o C, an acronym for Queen of Christmas, was denied by the US Patent and Trademark Office in November after Lotion LLC Company applied for it last year. Big Silence of the Lambs fan That's why her fans are called Lambs, right, gross and weird. Jordan tell us about Elizabeth Chan, apparently a songwriter and named Elizabeth Chan, whose entire deal is literally only recording Christmas music, filed that opposition in August to block this registration of those trademark names. She said, I feel very strongly that no one person should hold on to anything around Christmas or monopolize it in the way that Maria seeks to in perpetuity that she's talking to Variety in August. Maria Carry's legal team didn't respond the chance opposition and time, so the Patent and Trademark Office did not grant her the phrase. In other words, Maria does not own the phrase the Queen of Christmas or quoc or Princess Christmas. Yeah, this woman is so fascinating. I love this. Elizabeth Chan loved Christmas music since she was a child. She grew up not especially wealthy in New York. When she thought about making music as a career, she told Yahoo that she was told Asian artists don't make it in America. There's not a place for you in this business. So she became a relatively highly paid media executive and left that job in her thirties to go all in on Christmas music. She has remained an independent artist, self, releasing twelve albums in twelve years and over twelve hundred songs all about Christmas. It's a family business. Her husband Andy Fairley, designs her album covers, and her eldest daughter Noel collaborates with her, right earning the nickname the Princess of Christmas, which, of course Maria also saw a trademark. Chance said that she started getting dubbed the Queen of Christmas after her second Billboard hit. She uses as the title for her one album, and it was while doing the legal legwork necessary to release that album that her entertainment attorney flagged Carries March trademark application. For what it's worth, Darlene Love and Brenda Lee have also been called the Queens of Christmas for Christmas Baby Please Come Home and Rocking Around the Christmas Treaty, respectively, as you mentioned, as has Ronnie Specter. Chan Is Keen the stress that she doesn't want a trademark the nickname for herself. She just doesn't want Mariah Carey to own the phrase the Queen of Christmas and be able to use it for presumably a small country's worth of merchandizing purposes. But she was told that the retainer to fight just one trademark filing was a quarter million dollars, and Mariah filed four that chance ought to oppose. So she was looking at a million dollars plus forty grand in filing fees just to start the process. She told Yahoo, trademark law is not something that's done on contingency. There's no windfall of winnings. It's not like that. You're just fighting for status quo. So she would be a million forty grand in the hall, get in the door to keep things the same as it is. So yeah, she had the back down. You can't fight city hall. You can't fight the woman who uses stilettos on a StairMaster. She was rejected by dozens of lawyers, but for an old friend agreed to represent her for free a pro bono case for the Spirit of Christmas movie. She wrote a miss afterwards, but she wrote, the legal team is a series of songs about it, like a jingle. Oh oh my god, wow is it like a Woody Guthrie style, Like this is all like a developing case. Like these are recent interviews that she's been giving. So I don't know if the new one is out yet, but if she, if Elizabeth Chan releases a record, it's gone like thank you, you know, it's about this one. Well over the summer, Mariah Carry's team made several attempts to extend the proceedings, but the date for her to file a response to Chan's opposition came and went, which means the request is now permanently abandoned. I'm gonna trust you on this. I am not a lawyer. Chan was a surprised as anyone. She said that she'd been planning on a trial with dates going into so in other words, Maria gave up yeah yeah, or or they just like they missed a filing date and and and I guess again, this is what I'm going I was what I read. I'm not a lawyer. Probably wouldn't be doing a podcast on a podcast, um yeah um. She has this incredible quote though, in the Yahoo pee she says, at chance, lets with chance, Everyone in this business wants to tell you what's impossible. And then you think that's the doctrine, but it's not. Everyone told me you'll never win this trademark thing, you'll never find another job, your career is over. Everyone always wants to tell you what's not possible. Sometimes people just don't know. Oh we love a comp well, we love an underdog. Queen of Christmas story. That isn't even the only Mariah Christmas court battle fought this year. A Mississippi songwriter named Andy Stone, who released a song called All I Wanted for Chris As You under the moniker Vince Vance and the Valiance, filed suit against Carrie and a Final Sea in June, seeking damages of no less than twenty million for alleged copyright and arangement based because these songs sound nothing alike solely on the matching titles. It's like a country song. I know that's it's a good song. I hear it sometimes on the radio, and in fact, it really got to wonder how many times people have accidentally played it on some kind of streamer Christmas You. Yeah, so maybe they should be thanking Mariah. But well, his attorneys voluntarily dismissed the case just in November, which means he could refile the future, but it is definitely a long shot. Rolling Stone pointed out recently that there are currently a hundred and seventy seven copyrighted songs with the title all I Want for Christmas Is You. I would like to punch that song in right now, but considering how the titious they are, maybe it's not the move. I don't think it's very good and the music video for it is horrifying. Oh it's a late eighties country song. What do you expect? Okay? My favorite aftermath of all the one for Christmas You is when Biaber recorded a duet with Mariah first one album, under the Missiletoe. Marian wanted to do it in the original key, but Biber's voice started breaking just before they were set to record, and he had to really fight to get those notes. He told Billboard Magazine. Yeah, that was high, but I grinded it out and we got it down. How would any male sing it's original? Jordan? Do you have any final thoughts? I love the song. I never wanted to stuff He's sweet boy. I found a great quote about aside from its air tight musical construction, that sums up it's enduring appeal. Andrea Dresdale of ABC News Radio told Vogue, it's a Christmas song, but it has no religious content. In reality, it's just a love song. Everyone understands longing, desire, love, or just missing somebody. It's an upbeat song. So many Christmas songs are not Many of them are ballads, some of them are depressing, but this one sounds like a party. The success of the song I found a Stiefe told Billboard is kind of a cosmic occurrence that happens once every five billion years. I don't is the earth even that old. Whatever, thousands of original Christmas songs have been written in the last twenty years. It's not like no one writes Christmas songs. Everyone is trying to get a Christmas song. But for whatever reason, all I want for Christmas is you just became that song. It's kind of something you never would have thought and you can't really explain why. And we feel lucky. And I think carry as she would want to, should have the last word and appropriately with it, completely shut down the entire point of this episode and by extension, our careers. At the end of an interview with The New York Times, she said of her immortal song, I take myself out of the equation and just enjoyed as a spectator. People want to get so specific, and I'm like, dude, it's just a song. Well, folks, as you peer at me over your glasses, thank you for listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Eagle and I'm Jordan run Talk We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan runt Talk. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.