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Mariah Carey
Kevin Mazur/WireImage for MC/Getty ImagesMariah Carey delivered plenty of holiday cheer while kicking off the NFL’s Christmas Day games with a performance of its seasonal hit.
Grammy winner, 55, both games opened – the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 pm ET and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans at 4:30 pm ET, which streamed on Netflix – with a taped rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Wednesday, December 25. Carey stunned in red sequin bodysuit during a performance on the roof, flanked by dancers in Nutcracker costumes.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released 30 years ago as the lead single from Carey’s 1994 debut holiday album Merry Christmas. Three decades later, the song continues to dominate the charts and has been certified 16 times platinum, making it the highest certified single ever performed by a female artist.
In November, Carey reflected on the origins of the song in an interview with ABC News.
“I was working on it by myself … on this little Casio keyboard and writing words down and thinking, ‘What do I think of it at Christmas? What do I love? What do I want? What am I dreaming about?’” he recalled. “And that’s what started it.”
When crafting the track, Carey hoped it would become a holiday classic.
“My goal was to make something timeless, so it didn’t feel like the 90s, and that’s when I wrote it,” he added.
Now, 30 years later, the song is still one of the most popular tracks of the season, which Carey attributes to the fact that she “really, really” loves the Christmas. “It’s not fake,” he stressed.
Despite her genuine love for the holiday season, in a November interview with The New York Times Carey revealed that her 1994 Christmas album almost didn’t happen.
“I felt it was too early in my career,” he told the outlet.
Eventually, Carey’s love for the holidays came to the fore and she eventually became known as the queen of Christmas.
This year, Carey took her appreciation of the season up a notch by starting on the 16th Merry Christmas to one and allwhich made various stops across the United States and Canada between November 15 and December 17. (Her 2023 holiday tour only totaled four shows in Toronto and New York City.)
Mariah Carey has already decked her halls, but plenty of other musicians are getting into the spirit of the season with original holiday songs this year. Jack Antonoff’s band Bleachers dropped a single called “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call” in November. The producer sheds light on the inspiration behind the song in a long Instagram (…)
“Last year, we didn’t go, like, across the country,” he told ABC News. “So this year we’re doing that.”
Carey hoped the tour would give her fans “a merry Christmas” while also allowing them to enjoy “being together.”
She went on to tease that new music is “on the horizon,” hinting that she’s been “writing new songs” lately and spending time in the studio “working on something with a choir.”
