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This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter.
Mariah Carey loves Christmas. She loves it with a fanatic’s strict adherence to the laws of Christmas joy. She loves it like no one has ever loved Christmas before. (Did you have an actual reindeer at your holiday festivities last year? Did you hang out with Santa? Didn’t think so.) Christmas is also a cornerstone of the Carey complex. Frank Sinatra might have made the holiday classically jolly, Sufjan Stevens might have made it indie whiny, and Ariana Grande might have made it horny, but no artist has come to define our commercially driven holiday fantasies more than Carey has with “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Since the song dropped on her 1994 holiday album, it’s made an estimated $60 million-plus in royalties. It’s stayed relevant, thanks to fans, of course; a cover on the 2003 Love Actually soundtrack; an album reissue; an annual “All I Want for Christmas Is You” holiday-concert series that sold out a show at Madison Square Garden last year; an animated film; an Amazon Music mini-doc about the undying meaning of the song; and streams on streams on streams. Last year, it finally hit No. 1 on “The Hot 100” chart, after a record-breaking (for its slowness) 25-year journey. Who cares how long it took? It’s her 19th No. 1 hit — putting her above Elvis and one away from tying the Beatles. Does it matter if you like the song? (Full disclosure: I don’t.) No! It is the omnipresent anthem of holiday happiness.
And so this year, this exceptionally shit year of 2020, Carey, who always wants everyone to have a good Christmas, really thinks everyone should have a good Christmas, and she’s got 15 executives assembled in a Zoom war room at 10 p.m. to make damn sure everyone does. They’ve been going for two hours now, plotting ways to bring the merry and bright, no matter what it takes.
“I will sing with a puppet if it’s incredible,” I hear her say with deadly seriousness, that raspy, built-for-a-torchy-ballad voice floating in from one of many nearby rooms in the house she’s renting for the summer. She goes on to suggest possible...