The most annoyingly popular New Year’s song of recent decades has been named

Mariah Carey’s song “All I Want for Christmas is You” irritates many people with its annoyingness. During December, it is heard everywhere: shopping centers, radio, and takes first place in the listening charts. Why did it happen that a song that is almost 30 years old beats all the ratings and dominates the New Year’s music playlist like nothing else?

Mariah Carey’s New Year’s pop anthem “All I Want for Christmas is You” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The list ranks the most popular songs each week based on airplay, sales and streaming, not just holiday themed. One expert predicts that the song’s earnings will soon exceed $100 million, noting that even its ringtone has sold millions of copies.

“This song just went down in history and was the last song to enter the Christmas canon, and that vault is sealed,” says composer and 16-time Grammy Award winner David Foster. “It’s associated with Christmas. When you think about this holiday, you think about this song.”

Composer Foster told The Associated Press that writing a new holiday song is incredibly difficult because you’re not only competing with current hits, but songs and memories from hundreds of years ago. The old classics never go away. Only 10 songs on Billboard’s latest Hot 100 holiday songs list last year were written after “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

Carey’s hit is so ubiquitous that The Wall Street Journal published an article about how retail workers are going crazy over how many times it plays in their stores. And one of them, according to the magazine, runs away to the warehouse every time he hears the characteristic sounds of the beginning of a song.

But all is not as well with the Queen of Christmas as her song. The song’s co-writers, Carey and Walter Afanasyev, are in a mysterious feud. And the authors of another song with the same name filed a lawsuit, demanding damages in the amount of $20 million.

“Both musically and lyrically, the song was perfectly engineered for success,” Berklee College of Music professor Joe Bennett told The Associated Press.

Musicologists believe that at the time of its release, most new holiday music came from artists who had reached their peak and were looking for a new market. However, in 1994, Carey was at the top of her career.

“It’s a wish song, and it works narratively,” adds Bennett. “You can sing it to your loved one, whether you’re together or not. By most objective measures, it is the most successful Christmas song of all time.”

As Afanasyev revealed on the Hot Takes and Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild podcast, most of the work on “All I Want for Christmas is You” was done by him and Carey working out of a rented house in the summer of 1994. He played a boogie-woogie tune on the piano, throwing out ideas to which Carey responded with lyrics.

“It was like playing ping pong. I hit the ball from her, she hit it from me,” he shares the intricacies of working in tandem. Later, working alone, Carey completed the text, and Afanasiev recorded all the instruments.

Their mystical disagreements began after the singer’s divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola. Afanasyev continued to work for Carey’s ex-husband and became a victim of this broken marriage.

Afanasyev told Rothschild that he and Carey had not spoken for about two decades until she called him around the time of the song’s 25th anniversary, asking for his co-writer’s permission to use the lyrics to “All I Want for Christmas is You” in a children’s book.

This business call did not lead to a thaw. During her recent Good Morning America interview, the co-creator was not mentioned:

“I worked on it myself, I wrote on this little Casio keyboard, I wrote down the words and I thought about, ‘What do I think about Christmas? What do I love? What do I want? What do I dream about? And that’s where it all started,'” Mariah Carey admitted.

But there are several conflicting factors: at the time the song was written, Carey was not a keyboard player and did not know how to write music, according to Afanasyev.

In an interview with Variety, he said that the singer definitely doesn’t share credit where it’s due. As a result, it damages the reputation of colleagues and consequently leaves them with a bittersweet taste in their mouth.

Recall that in November 2023, songwriters Andy Stone and Troy Powers filed a lawsuit in California federal court against Carey and Afanasyev, demanding $20 million for copyright infringement and citing their own 1989 country song “All I Want for Christmas is You.” They note that their songs have a similar theme. When filing the lawsuit, the authors cited the “overwhelming probability” that Carey and Afanasiev heard their song.

According to musicologist Jo Bennett, the two songs have no musical similarities and the theme is hardly unique. He noted other similar songs at the time, following the logic of Stone and Powers: “You’re All I Want for Christmas” by Bing Crosby, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Carla Thomas and “All I Want for Christmas” Christmas, Darling, is You” by Buck Owens. “So it’s nonsense,” Bennett sums it up.