Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey performing live. Photo Credit: Raph_PH

Mariah Carey, Wham!, Brenda Lee, Sia, and other perennial holiday favorites are duking it out for Christmas chart supremacy. Globally, however, Wham!’s “Last Christmas” has managed to dethrone Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Spotify’s weekly chart.

In the end, that impressive charting feat came down to a relatively small number of streams. According to Spotify’s own consumption stats, “Last Christmas” generated 85.80 million global plays between December 19th and 25th, against 85.25 million plays for Carey’s second-ranked “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

Meanwhile, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (78.25 million streams) took the third spot, followed by Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (68.49 million) and then Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” (60.87 million) to round out the top five.

Of course, with decades of exposure helping them along, the first four tracks still possess a massive edge in cumulative streams – including a whopping 2.19 billion Spotify plays for “Last Christmas” (plus millions more on remixes, the single version, etc.) and nearly 2.50 billion plays for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

It probably goes without saying that Carey and Wham! also benefited from stream-volume boosts on different platforms, besides social media gains, in the lead-up to Christmas. On December 18th, for instance, Carey added 7,763 Instagram followers, 275.2% higher than her usual growth rate, per Chartmetric.

(Evidently, interest in holiday playlists, and perhaps real music in general, falls off after Christmas. Apple Music Sleep’s “Sleep Sounds” and “Rain Sounds” playlists are sitting atop the appropriate chart at present, with a holiday playlist in third and Apple Music Sleep’s “White Noise” in fifth.)

Furthermore, the holiday classics’ chart rankings vary by region. In the States, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” placed first with 24.24 million Spotify streams across the 19th and the 25th, against second for “Jingle Bell Rock” (20.61 million) and third for “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (19.34 million).

Also in the U.S., Sia’s “Snowman” ranked 19th for the week (10.57 million Spotify streams) – compared to eighth globally (53.02 million). Regarding the discrepancy, Euronews proclaimed “Snowman” Europe’s “top seasonal song” on Spotify.

Technically, “Snowman” finished behind the other above-mentioned works in many European nations for the week, the charts indicate. But it benefited from especially strong showings in Norway and elsewhere, hence the continent-wide results. Interestingly, as Christmas approached, Sia’s strategy-minded team plugged her holiday tracks via posts penned in French, Indonesian, and Malay.

Another important point: There’s much more to the Mariah Carey Christmas machine than straight streaming. Just in passing, the MusiCares 2026 Person of the Year cashed in with a Vegas residency (the final show from which was livestreamed by TikTok, Apple Music, and Gamma) as well as Amazon-exclusive merch, to name a couple things.

Additionally, the consistent holiday-season buzz doesn’t hurt from the global-momentum perspective. According to Ticketmaster, Carey’s Saadiyat Nights concert, scheduled for February 7th in the United Arab Emirates, has sold out.