Vacation songs dominate the pop charts for one final week : NPR

It is a week of chart milestones, as vacation songs maintain down the highest 24 spots on the Billboard Scorching 100, Mariah Carey extends a number of chart information and Taylor Swift pulls out all of the stops to defeat her newest rival, an upstart by the title of Bing Crosby.

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This was destined to be a Christmas-y week on the Scorching 100: The week’s chart displays seven full days of vacation listening — streaming, airplay, gross sales — spanning from Dec. 19 by Dec. 25, with no post-holiday lull to even flippantly depress the numbers. Vacation songs now take up each one of many high 24 spots. About this time final 12 months, they solely took up 16.

Nonetheless, it is exceptional to look at how totally the Scorching 100 has been reworked within the streaming period. This week, simply 4 of the highest 50 songs are non-holiday titles. (Extra on these beneath.) However in case you scan the Scorching 100 from precisely 10 years in the past — it takes a Billboard subscription to take action — you may spot three vacation songs on the whole chart: Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You” rising to its then-peak at No. 18, The Voice winner Jordan Smith’s “Mary Did You Know” debuting at No. 24 and Brenda Lee‘s “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree” climbing to No. 38. In a single decade, streaming has turned the Christmas Scorching 100 inside-out.

Yr-over-year, the modifications are extra incremental. However a number of milestones are price noting as 2025’s vacation season attracts mercifully to a detailed:

• “All I Need for Christmas Is You” extends not less than three all-time Scorching 100 information this week. It is No. 1 for a twenty second nonconsecutive week. It provides Carey her one hundred and first general week at No. 1. (Rihanna is in second place all-time, with 60.) And, as a result of this week’s chart is dated Jan. 2, 2026, Carey has already notched her twenty second calendar 12 months during which one in all her songs hits No. 1. That is… lots, particularly when you think about that she’d have the all-time report even with out “All I Need for Christmas Is You.”
• It speaks to each the ability of “All I Need for Christmas Is You” and the recency of the vacations’ chart dominance that solely three vacation songs have hit No. 1 for the reason that Scorching 100’s creation in 1958: The opposite two are Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Across the Christmas Tree,” which briefly surpassed Carey in 2023, and The Chipmunks‘ “The Christmas Track (Christmas Do not Be Late)” within the chart’s first 12 months of existence. So it is price noting when a vacation title notches its first-ever week at No. 2; final week, Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” did simply that. Helms, Lee and Wham! (with “Final Christmas”) have all hit No. 2 throughout this vacation season.
• Michael Bublé has grow to be one of many faces of Christmas — it is the one that appears unnervingly like Robin Thicke — however he is nonetheless by no means hit the Scorching 100’s high 10. “It is Starting to Look a Lot Like Christmas” tops out at No. 13 this week. Bublé does higher on the albums chart, the place Christmas sits at No. 3, maybe as a result of his music works higher as wallpaper than as particular person songs.
• Vince Guaraldi Trio‘s album A Charlie Brown Christmas has boomed this vacation season — it is presently at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 — and its signature track (“Christmastime Is Right here”) leaps from No. 36 to a brand new peak at No. 23.

TOP ALBUMS

The Scorching 100 is not the one Billboard chart dominated by the vacations this week. The Billboard 200 albums chart additionally units a report, as seven titles flip up within the high 10 for the primary time ever. And Bing Crosby’s personal Final Christmas pulls off the largest streaming week for any vacation album in historical past.

That is all lots spectacular, however not even Der Bingle himself can unseat the queen of chart manipulation: At No. 1 for an eleventh nonconsecutive week is Taylor Swift’s The Lifetime of a Showgirl.

How’d she do it? Nicely, you need to return to Nov. 24 — that is the day Swift’s web site opened a 24-hour window for followers to order three new vinyl variant editions of the album. (That is on high of the handfuls of vinyl variations already in circulation.) Her individuals took all these preorders, sat on them, then shipped them on or simply after Dec. 19. As a result of webstore gross sales do not rely till copies are shipped, The Lifetime of a Showgirl acquired credit score for these Nov. 24 gross sales throughout this week’s window of chart eligibility.

In different phrases, in case you purchased a number of of these vinyl variants as a present and it did not present up till after Christmas, you’ll be able to take solace in the truth that your {dollars} helped Taylor Swift defeat Bing Crosby and safe that all-important eleventh week at No. 1. A grateful nation heaves a sigh of aid.

TOP SONGS

With the potential exception of an “Auld Lang Syne” right here and there, subsequent week’s Scorching 100 is more likely to be bereft of vacation titles. That is going to imply huge chart turnover, provided that 49 vacation songs flip up on this week’s chart. (Previous songs which have charted earlier than are solely eligible for the Scorching 100 in the event that they hit the highest 50.)

In the event you’re on the lookout for post-holiday tendencies price watching, begin by contemplating the 4 non-Christmas-adjacent songs that managed to squeeze into this week’s high 50: HUNTR/X’s “Golden,” Taylor Swift’s “The Destiny of Ophelia,” Olivia Dean‘s “Man I Want” and Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas.”

“Golden” hits a serious milestone this week, because it tops the Radio Songs chart for the primary time — and turns into the first-ever Okay-pop track to take action. “The Destiny of Ophelia” will certainly give “Golden” a run for its cash subsequent week, given the chance that Swift has simply shipped an unique variant version on piano roll or one thing. (We’ve not checked, however would not be shocked.) “Man I Want” remains to be surging, as are a number of of Dean’s different songs. And “Choosin’ Texas” appears to be like poised to land Langley within the high 10 for the primary time in her profession.

Talking of chart milestones, three different songs are properly positioned to take pleasure in their first-ever visits to the highest 10 subsequent week. In the event you merely subtract all the vacation tracks from this week’s chart, the rapper Pooh Shiesty would sit at No. 7 along with his post-prison comeback track “FDO,” RAYE would hit No. 9 with “The place Is My Husband!” and Olivia Dean would land a second high 10 hit with “So Simple (To Fall in Love).” Different components will certainly come into play, however slightly chart turnover is at all times welcome.