Mariah Carey and K-pop group Stray Kids rule this week's charts

Holiday music rules the pop charts once again this week, as Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" scores its 17th nonconsecutive week at No. 1 — the third longest run of all time. On the albums chart, the K-pop group Stray Kids debuts at No. 1 with HOP; the group has debuted atop the Billboard 200 with its first six charting albums, which is a new record to kick off a career. And, though the same five holiday songs sit atop the Hot 100 as last week (and last year at this time, for that matter), there's a fresh milestone for more recent-vintage Christmas songs by Ariana Grande and Kelly Clarkson.

Top albums

This past summer, the K-pop group Stray Kids debuted atop the Billboard 200 with a record called ATE. That feat tied an all-time record, as only one other artist's chart history — that of the late rapper DMX — began with five straight albums that debuted at No. 1. Now, just four months later, Stray Kids can claim the record outright, as a new album called HOP debuts atop the charts. That's a run of six straight No. 1 debuts, all of them within a span of just three calendar years.

Because so much of HOP's chart success is derived from sales rather than streaming — with an emphasis on CD sales, curiously enough — Stray Kids' stay atop the Billboard 200 may be short. (The group's previous records have followed a similar path.) But it speaks to the considerable power of K-pop music that so many albums in the genre have debuted at or near the top of the charts this year.

If you're looking for a metric to convey K-pop's growth in the U.S. — as well as the increasingly international nature of the pop charts in the streaming era — a total of 27 albums have hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with vocals predominantly performed in a language other than English. Of those 27, exactly two-thirds of them are in Korean, and all of them have come out since 2018.

Below Stray Kids, Kendrick Lamar's GNX holds at No. 2 for a third straight week since its debut atop the chart, while Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department slides from No. 1 to No. 3. Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet climbs from No. 5 to No. 4, the Wicked soundtrack slips from No. 6 to No. 7, Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft rises from No. 9 to No. 8 and Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess surges back into the Top 10, climbing from No. 11 to No. 9.

That leaves three holiday titles to round out the Top 10. Though none of its songs have hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, Michael Bublé's Christmas climbs from No. 7 to No. 5 — which suggests that much of its audience prefers to hear Bublé drain the life out of holiday favorites in album-length doses, mostly via streaming. Bing Crosby's Ultimate Christmas, a generously portioned holiday collection from earlier this year, climbs from No. 8 to No. 6, while Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas leaps into the Top 10, climbing from No. 14 to No. 10 on the strength of… well you know.

Top songs

Yes, in a development as predictable as the tides, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" once again sits atop the Hot 100. It's the song's third straight week atop the chart, which is no big surprise; what's notable is the accumulation of weeks at No. 1, which is approaching record territory. With 17 weeks at No. 1 — all of them racked up in two- to four-week bursts starting in 2019 — the song has now posted the third-longest run at No. 1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which dates back to 1958. It also stands alone with the longest run of Carey's career; her "One Sweet Day," with Boyz II Men, was a world-beating record-setter with 16 weeks at No. 1 back in 1995-96.

Assuming it tops the chart next week, as well, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" looks primed to break the all-time record shortly after the commencement of the 2025 holiday season — assuming no song runs up a longer streak between now and then. Currently, the all-time record of 19 weeks at No. 1 is held by two songs, both of them from the streaming era: Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)" from 2019 and Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which dominated the Hot 100 for much of this year. (It finally dropped out of the Top 10 just this week, but looks poised to reenter the chart's upper reaches once the holiday perennials get mothballed.)

Speaking of holiday perennials — and the stench of mothballs — the usual suspects round out the Top 5. Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" holds at No. 2, a spot it knows well, while Wham!'s "Last Christmas" jumps from No. 4 to No. 3, thanks in part to a new physical release and the release of a Wham! documentary on Netflix. "Last Christmas" swaps places with the zombified corpse of Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," while Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas" holds at No. 5.

Only one non-holiday song sits in this week's Top 10, so give credit to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars for their resilience as "Die With a Smile" holds at No. 6. Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" dampens the season by jumping from No. 11 to No. 7 — seriously, people, Andy Williams, we've talked about this — while Dean Martin's "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" leaps from No. 12 to No. 8. And at No. 9 and No. 10 are… well, sit tight for a sec.

Worth noting

So, before we get to Nos. 9 and 10, here's a wild statistic: Until this week, the newest holiday song to hit the Billboard Top 10 is from… 1999, when Kenny G released a sax-y cover of "Auld Lang Syne." (The song had a "Millennium Remix" that incorporated news clips from the 20th century, which helped G's "Auld Lang Syne" reach No. 7 in 2000.)

Which means that, for nearly 25 years, not a single newly recorded holiday song — of the thousands upon thousands that have been released — has graced the Billboard Top 10. Nothing by Taylor Swift, nothing by Beyoncé, not one song by any artist whose career began in the 21st century. Hope you like Andy Williams, suckers, because the holiday season is for songs that bored your grandparents!

So consider it progress that two 21st-century holiday songs have ended the drought and hit the Top 10 for the very first time this week: Kelly Clarkson's 2013 song "Underneath the Tree" climbs from No. 15 to No. 10, while Ariana Grande's "Santa Tell Me," from 2014, rises from No. 14 to No. 9. So if you want to know how long it takes a holiday song to travel from "new" to "officially welcomed into the canon," the answer is: "at least a decade." Even for those of us who've had "Santa Tell Me" stuck in their head for weeks, it has to count as progress.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a sense of just how old most seasonal standards are, consider that "Auld Lang Syne" is one of only two holiday songs from the '90s to have ever hit the Top 10. The other? A sweet little ditty, perhaps you've heard it, called "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

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