Mariah Carey Shares Her Favorite Billboard Music Awards Memory & Recalls ‘Vision of Love’ Topping Hot 100

Mariah Carey will perform “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at an awards show for the very first time at tonight’s Billboard Music Awards, and in a pre-show interview, she reflected on some of her favorite memories with BiIlboard over the years.

“My favorite BBMAs memory is when I won artist of the decade,” she says of the honor she received in 1999. “I gave this kind of off-the-cuff speech. It was one of my favorite times at any awards show ever.”

As for her first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, “Vision of Love,” Carey says the whole moment was a whirlwind. “I think I didn’t really understand the magnitude of that at that time,” she recalls. “I’m pretty sure I celebrated. It’s a little bit blurry.”

Overall on the Billboard charts, Carey has had 19 No. 1 Hot 100 hits — the most of any solo artist. She is the artist with the most weeks at No. 1 (91). She is the female songwriter with the most No. 1 hits (18). She is the only artist to reach No. 1 with her first five singles: “Vision of Love,” “Love Takes Time,” “Someday,” “I Don’t Wanna Cry” and “Emotions.”

At the 2023 Billboard Music Awards, Carey will be honored with the Billboard Chart Achievement Award for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The holiday classic, which has climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 every year since 2019, has thus far spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s flagship chart, becoming one of three Carey hits to log 10 or more weeks in the top spot. It joins “One Sweet Day,” a collab with Boyz II Men that spent a then-record 16 weeks at No. 1 in 1995-96, and “We Belong Together,” which spent 14 weeks on top in 2005.

Performances and awards will roll out across BBMAs and Billboard social channels, as well as via BBMAs.watch, tonight beginning at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.

Going into tonight’s show, Taylor Swift is the top finalist at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards Presented by Marriott Bonvoy, with nods in 20 categories. Wallen and SZA are runners-up, with 17 entries each. They are followed by The Weeknd (16); Drake and Zach Bryan (14); Luke Combs (10); 21 Savage, Metro Boomin and Miley Cyrus (nine each); Beyoncé and Rema (seven each); Bad Bunny and Pluma (six each); and Ariana Grande, Guetta, Eslabon Armado, Karol G, NewJeans and Selena Gomez (five each).