Mariah Carey
It’s the holiday season, the time to stroll the streets with childlike wonder. The time to stare at anything that glows or twinkles as if there’s magic to be witnessed in a storefront or a lamppost. The time to make snowflakes and hot chocolate and wrap presents and laugh merrily at every problem, as if the atmosphere itself makes problems less problematic.
It’s the time to sing Christmas songs.
I’m not a huge Christmas caroler. I have a finite set of seasonal songs I tolerate, and I’m pretty stubborn about changing it. I like “Silver Bells” by Bing Crosby. I like “Father Christmas” by The Kinks. I like “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball” by The Killers. I can get down to some Trans-Siberian Orchestra with the rest of them, but that’s pretty much it.
What I do not like is a certain song by one Miss Mariah Carey.
That’s right: “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
I don’t know why this song is popular. I don’t know why it initially caused an avalanche of praise for the then-young diva. I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to.
Is the song innocuous enough? Sure, if you can tolerate the tooth-numbing mawkishness of Carey’s saccharine pop. Is it as irritating as building a ginger bread house with dry frosting? You bet.
I might have a personal grudge because, as a high school dancer, I was the kick-lining servant to the song’s every wailed command. After two months of practices and two months of kick lines, any piece of music would lose its cheery integrity.
Still, there are objective (kind of), intrinsic (kind of) reasons “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is about as appetizing as your great aunt’s thawed fruitcake.
First: Carey’s vocals are loud enough to shake the icicles off of Jack Frost. How the rest of America has gone through winter after winter season is beyond me. Maybe eggnog has a weird amnesic property that science has not yet discovered, but I have never forgotten the pain of that eardrum-rattling screech. For transparency’s sake, I also have never had eggnog.
Secondly: Carey’s lyrics, while sentimentally sound, are ridiculous. Apparently, Santa Claus won’t make her happy with a toy on Christmas day, nor will she “make a list and send it to the North Pole for Saint Nick.” How tragic. Of course you won’t, Mariah! You’re a grown woman! You want your baby? Go get him/her/it (do we ever figure out who this “baby” that Mariah pines for is?). Well into her 20s when she wrote this 1994 single, there was no need to take a whole 4:01 to throw a pity party and list all the cliche, childish Christmas tropes that she refuses to partake in. You can’t just throw down a list of demands like that, Carey — Santa’s got a lot of planning to do as it is.
The song’s one redeeming quality is Carey’s pristine vocals. She’s a hell of a singer, if not a little screechy at times. But even that is a thing of the past.
