0:00

Alright. Are you ready for your big debut? A

0:09

suitcase around.

0:14

Hello? Hello? Oh

0:16

my god. I hear something.

0:18

Somebody wants to say hi to you.

0:22

Yeah. Say hi, Andy

0:25

Kate. Hello, baby, Bedford.

0:27

We've got matching clothes. Oh my god. You guys

0:29

are both wearing your journal shirts. That's

0:32

the cutest thing I've ever seen. He's

0:34

crying.

0:34

Yeah. And he just we just woke him up

0:36

to come into the studio. Oh. And

0:40

say, hi. What's your first time on night, buddy?

0:44

What do you have to say? Say, welcome to get

0:46

your

0:46

home.

0:46

He says, sure, it's money, business, and power.

0:54

We've just been hanging out.

0:57

Eating, sleeping, changing

0:59

diapers? It's been

1:01

great. Thanks for manning the ship.

1:04

We've been missing you. Well, I miss

1:06

you

1:06

guys. I've been listening to the show. It's been

1:08

great. I can't believe you guys were able to make it without

1:10

me. Yeah.

1:14

I can't either. And I can't wait for you come

1:16

back, which is gonna happen

1:18

pretty soon. Yeah. It's gonna happen

1:20

really soon. Bedford, though, is like,

1:23

I don't think so, dad. One

1:26

of the reasons I called you in addition to to

1:28

showing you baby bedford here, so you could

1:30

say, hi. Is because I wanted

1:32

to I wanted to ask

1:34

you if you made a blooper reel.

1:37

Why would I do that? I

1:40

haven't made a blooper reel. Ryan, have

1:42

you made a blooper reel?

1:44

I didn't either, actually.

1:47

But Peter Leonard, who is an

1:49

incredible engineer on the show, he

1:51

cut together something from an

1:53

interview that took place a few months

1:55

ago, which I find

1:58

to be hilarious than I wanted to play

2:00

for you. So

2:01

Wow. That's that's part of it.

2:03

Yeah.

2:05

I I think I can hear Pippa. Yeah.

2:08

Could be I know. Could be? Could

2:11

be you ruining my interview? She's

2:16

an absolute menace to society. I'm

2:18

so sorry. That's okay.

2:21

Here, let me throw a treat. Oops.

2:27

It's all good. So

2:31

What we're seeing in Jackson is an example

2:33

of people

2:35

love this

2:35

cat, I've ever had a puppy. No. I

2:37

know.

2:40

That's like just a small window into

2:42

how much fun we have making this show

2:44

and there's so much work that goes into it and

2:46

we get so much time from all

2:49

the reporters at Wall Street Journal and all the outside

2:51

guests that we interview, and

2:53

we're so appreciative of all the

2:55

time that everybody puts into this. And

2:58

we're also extremely appreciative of all

3:00

of our incredible listeners who have been with

3:02

us this year and in past years.

3:05

Thank you so much for listening to the show.

3:07

And we're off this week. Taking some time until

3:09

January, Ryan is going to

3:11

continue to take care of Bedford, but

3:13

will be back with us --

3:14

Yes. -- in twenty twenty three. I will.

3:16

And the rest of the team is gonna catch up on

3:18

sleep and family time, but we

3:20

wanted to leave you with this holiday classic.

3:23

We made it in twenty twenty and it's

3:25

about the queen of Christmas music,

3:27

Mariah Carey. And her hit

3:29

holiday song, all I want

3:31

for Christmas is you. You've

3:33

probably heard it many, many times this season.

3:36

And as this episode reveals, there

3:38

are a lot of reasons why it's endured.

3:40

Here's the episode. Our

3:46

colleague John Jorgensen has been

3:48

living, breathing, and writing

3:51

about Christmas

3:51

music. One song in

3:53

particular. I've had, like, my

3:55

ears tuned for those little bells that start

3:58

the song. You

4:00

know, it might be in a car that's

4:02

passing. It

4:05

might be on TV. Certainly

4:09

on the radio because my wife has

4:11

Christmas music on

4:13

repeat. Pretty much it's from Thanksgiving

4:15

through January. So I hear

4:17

it lot in my house also. That

4:20

song is Mariah Carey's smash

4:23

hit. All I want for Christmas

4:25

is you.

4:27

Oh, wonderful Christmas.

4:32

Mom is just one thing

4:34

up.

4:36

This song feels like it's everywhere

4:38

this time of year. And the numbers

4:41

back that up. It

4:43

is the star on top

4:45

of the tree under which all other

4:47

Christmas on ornaments can't even get

4:49

close. So

4:52

last year, it got about

4:54

309 million audio

4:57

and video

4:57

streams. And by comparison, The

5:00

second most popular Christmas song, which was Brent

5:02

Middle East rocking around the Christmas tree, that old

5:04

chestnut, that got about a hundred

5:06

and ninety three million streams. All

5:10

I want for Christmas is so popular.

5:12

It's easy to forget that it hasn't

5:14

always been like this. The

5:16

song surge to the top of our collective

5:18

playlist happened fast, and

5:21

it actually happened pretty

5:22

recently. John wanted

5:25

to know why. The question

5:27

I had was how a song

5:29

that's been around so long, it's been heard of

5:31

Christmas landscape for decades. Can

5:34

have this kind of vault

5:37

into ubiquity and

5:39

also do so exponentially. Listen

5:42

Christmas music every year of all varieties. Why

5:44

is this one heads and tails above

5:46

all the rest?

5:49

So John, who covers the entertainment

5:52

industry, went straight to the source

5:54

and called up the queen of Christmas

5:57

herself. Hi,

5:58

Marriott. Hi, John. How are you?

6:01

Great to see you. Great to see you as

6:03

well. Welcome

6:07

to the Journal. Our show go about money,

6:09

business, and power. I'm Kaye Limua.

6:19

Coming up on the show, the

6:21

Rise and Big Business. Of

6:24

all I want for Christmas is you.

6:35

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7:11

So this is the first time I've actually spoken to

7:13

Moriah. I've written about her in the past, but this

7:15

is the first time I've ever had chance to interview her.

7:18

John wanted to talk to Mariah about

7:20

how all I want for Christmas got so

7:22

big. But the official reason

7:24

for the call was her new project for Apple

7:26

TV. Mariah Carey's

7:29

magical Christmas special. There's

7:31

clearly room for this

7:33

Christmas business of yours to grow. Tell

7:35

me what your priorities were for this year.

7:38

Every Christmas, my goal is to

7:40

be festive and celebrate. And

7:43

it's really it's funny because when you said

7:45

this Christmas business. I know that it's a business,

7:47

but it really is AII don't know how to

7:49

explain it except that I think

7:52

I love it more than anybody. And

7:54

I really think the special is

7:56

gonna make people get in the Christmas

7:58

period. And I can't create, like, festiveness

8:01

for people if they I mean, I can try. I I do

8:03

try. But if if they're not into

8:04

it, I can't make them have as much fun as

8:07

I can do with it. But, you know,

8:09

so you were on a video

8:12

call with Mariah

8:13

care. Yeah. What did it

8:15

look like? I mean, I think that plant

8:17

at Mariah is a special place

8:19

under any circumstances, but at

8:21

Christmas time, it certainly is much

8:24

more extravagantly decorated. I'd

8:27

go over the top and over the top thing. I'm

8:29

sitting here with Christmas trees in my house. Like, there's

8:31

eight trees here. Whatever. It's it's it's

8:33

completely over the top with

8:35

that. I only saw about four in the background of

8:37

my video call, but I'll take her that there were eight

8:39

in the whole household. These

8:43

days, Mariah Carey is all

8:46

in on Christmas. But she

8:48

wasn't always. John

8:50

says, when her label first pitched

8:52

the idea of a Christmas album, she

8:54

was skipped Nicole. This was

8:56

in the early nineties when Mariah's

8:58

fame was in full

8:59

swing. So to put that into context,

9:02

this was about a year after she released

9:04

her third album music box. Smash

9:07

success. You know, this is an artist. On

9:09

the way up in every sense of the word.

9:11

And so especially at that time

9:14

Christmas albums, Christmas music

9:16

was perceived as something that someone was

9:18

going to do when they're over the hill. Because

9:20

when I first did it, I was like, I'm really doing

9:22

a Christmas song right now. This feels very

9:25

premature to me. And I

9:27

really have to say it was such a smart

9:29

decision to do it, and I and

9:31

all I went for Christmas is you was the first

9:33

song that I wrote and recorded

9:36

for that album. So

9:39

there's kind of a hey geography around the

9:41

song that doesn't really involve her co writer.

9:45

As the sort of history

9:47

and lore of this song has

9:50

been recounted. She was tasked

9:52

to write Christmas music she was

9:54

sort of sequestered in this house upstate

9:57

trying to put herself in the mood. And

9:59

so in one room of the house, she had

10:02

It's a wonderful life. The classic

10:04

Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie playing. She

10:06

had lights and sort of ambiance of

10:09

the holidays, so sort of setting the mood and she

10:11

went up as she recalls it on this little

10:13

crummy keyboard that she had available and

10:15

started plunking out the melody

10:18

for all I want for Christmas is you.

10:20

So she wrote the song. I

10:22

have to say, for all the times

10:25

I've heard it, I never knew that she

10:27

actually wrote

10:27

it. Yeah. I think Mariah's

10:30

fans love to stress this fact,

10:32

but I think other people don't

10:34

necessarily think about it enough,

10:37

which is that she composed

10:39

the song. She co wrote the song.

10:41

She co produced the song. She created

10:43

the song essentially. Thinking about it. Like,

10:45

there's been people that said to me, you

10:48

wrote all I want for Christmas

10:50

as you, like, grown adults. That

10:52

assume it was a remake because that was

10:54

the vibe was trying to give it

10:56

in terms of making the record in first

10:58

place and writing the song. And I think

11:00

people forget because of Mariah as a voice

11:02

and her vocal talents and her kinda

11:05

glam

11:05

image. I think a lot of people forget that

11:07

she's also a songwriter how would

11:09

you describe the song for

11:12

those people who haven't heard it

11:14

or those people who probably

11:16

have heard it but didn't know what it

11:17

was? The song is timeless in one way

11:20

because it was written in the nineteen nineties, but

11:22

it's a throwback to the

11:24

nineteen sixties in some ways. This

11:26

kind of fill Spectre,

11:28

wall of sounds, production style

11:32

that was very unique to a time and place that

11:34

many kind of deem ageless and

11:36

timeless. What I find unique

11:38

about the song is that it's about four minutes

11:40

long, but the first minute

11:42

of the song starting with those bells

11:45

is this sort of elaborate

11:47

warm up period where she's kind of

11:50

getting us into the mood. Almost

11:56

sort of warming up locally and

11:58

creating a little suspense, intention

12:00

in the song. And that lasts for almost

12:03

a full minute before what we know

12:05

of the the actual song really starts

12:07

to kick in. Yes. There's

12:14

this big drumbeat and then these

12:17

really propulsive verses that

12:19

she sings. So

12:29

there's this sort of build up and suspense,

12:31

and then the rest of the song, the final three

12:33

minutes, is all kind of payoff. In

12:36

her singing and e

12:38

tempo and also

12:40

the chorus of voices around her,

12:42

which gives people listening, ample

12:44

opportunity to kinda harmonize with her and

12:47

almost back up Mariah as

12:49

we sing along with her throughout the song.

13:01

Do you sing along with her? I

13:04

certainly home. Do you like

13:07

this song? I do like this song. It's a

13:09

great it's a great tune and it's not it's

13:11

not saccharin I mean, there's

13:13

a lot of Christmas songs that I run the other way from.

13:16

I don't do that with Mariah's song. It's

13:19

probably hard to pick a moment, but when you're performing

13:21

it, What's the

13:23

exact moment in that song that you love the most?

13:26

I don't know that there is one specific

13:29

note. I know that I would be doing

13:32

let's say, the Tokyo Dome. Right?

13:34

Even in July, when when the bells

13:36

that begin to saw the ding ding ding ding.

13:39

When that would start, because it was

13:41

always a very calm audience, like

13:43

a a different experience culturally. And

13:46

then the bells came out. It

13:50

looks like the place suddenly woke up

13:53

even in the summer. It became this

13:55

thing where you're

13:56

like, wow, people really know

13:58

it from the first bell. People

14:01

might know the song from the first bell today,

14:04

but it wasn't always a hit, coming

14:07

up. How Mariah's signature

14:10

Christmas song became a smash success.

14:25

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people.

15:01

All I want for Christmas came out

15:03

in nineteen ninety four. It

15:05

was a modest hit on its own terms,

15:07

the I believe the album itself went to number

15:10

three on the Billboard albums chart, you know, not

15:12

bad for a Christmas album. But the song

15:14

was never marketed as

15:16

a standalone single in the way we think

15:18

about singles now? That

15:20

seems surprising. Well, if you

15:22

think about it, This is in the nineties. This

15:25

is pre MP3s, pre digital era.

15:27

Most of us were not going out and buying individual

15:30

singles or EPs. We were

15:32

buying the album, many people did,

15:34

and they would play it at home. And so there was no

15:37

real metric and no real mechanism

15:39

for that song to vault ahead

15:41

of the rest.

15:42

But in the early odds that started

15:45

to change. Services like iTunes

15:47

let people buy all I want for Christmas

15:49

as a stand alone single, and a lot

15:51

of people did. Marriott

15:53

and her label started putting more marketing behind

15:55

the song. She did those Christmas concerts

15:58

and specials. And then last

16:00

year, twenty five years after

16:02

it first came out, the song hit

16:04

number one. So I remember

16:06

Christmas Day last year, I was

16:08

sitting in Aspen in the house

16:11

three o'clock in the morning, had seen the

16:13

the billboard piece. It was

16:16

such a feeling of not just a feeling

16:18

of accomplishment, but also a feeling

16:20

of content, like,

16:22

really feeling at peace, really feeling extremely

16:25

thankful just for the moment and

16:27

just taking a beat to enjoy

16:30

it and to acknowledge it.

16:33

Mariah gives credit for the song

16:35

surge to her fans. They've

16:38

been organizing for years. To

16:40

vault the song to the top of the charts in

16:42

twenty nineteen, and make it

16:44

her nineteenth number one hit.

16:47

Because they did it. Like, I wasn't sitting

16:49

at home maniacally trying to make that

16:51

happen. It it actually happened

16:53

organically all around the world fans

16:55

really, really try to

16:57

make it happen for me for this as my nineteenth

17:00

number one. But it wasn't just

17:02

the fans. John says,

17:04

you can also trace the song's rapid

17:06

rise to

17:07

streaming. Starting around

17:09

twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,

17:11

twenty fourteen is when services

17:14

like Spotify, Pandora really

17:16

started to become default for a

17:18

lot of us as music listeners. And really

17:20

if you think about when the streaming

17:22

era as we know it took hold, that's really in

17:24

the last five years or so. And that's where you

17:26

see the song jump

17:29

in terms of plays by

17:31

an order of magnitude every year.

17:34

In twenty twelve, all I want for

17:36

Christmas had three million audio

17:39

streams. In twenty nineteen,

17:41

it had a hundred sixty six And

17:43

a lot of that growth came from playlists.

17:46

So think of the fact that I decided

17:49

to make a Christmas holiday playlist for my

17:51

house, when my family and I are decorating

17:53

the trees, let's say, I'm gonna put

17:55

Mariah Carey song on there. And

17:58

so are a million other people who

18:00

are making holiday playlist because they know that

18:02

song. They love that song. Blanc. They put that

18:04

on the playlist. You also

18:06

have the album rhythms of

18:08

a site like Spotify that

18:10

are recognizing that that song is popular

18:12

around Christmas. The algorithm says,

18:15

that's a smart song to be putting on are

18:17

automatically generated playlists. So

18:20

you have this kind of amplifying

18:23

force around streaming

18:25

that once a song is

18:28

on that level, it just gets

18:30

bigger and bigger and bigger.

18:34

It feels like streaming is

18:36

giving a lot of older songs a boost.

18:39

We've seen it this year with dreams from

18:41

Fleetwood

18:42

Mac. Is this

18:45

happening a lot? Oh,

18:47

yeah. I mean, that is

18:49

the coolest thing probably about the

18:51

streaming ecosystem, this

18:54

kind of windmill of popularity gets

18:56

rolling. And often

18:58

it can just be one thing. In that case,

19:00

it was a TikTok video that a guy

19:02

made drinking cranberry juice and just kind

19:05

of vibing out to that song and something about

19:07

the way he loved it and the way it just

19:09

sort of presented itself on TikTok, just

19:12

sent it into this kind of stratosphere

19:14

of replays and views So

19:17

bursts like that happen all the time, but

19:19

there's a little bit different than what we're seeing with

19:21

Mariah

19:22

song, which is kind of a seasonal version

19:24

of that burst. Every time December

19:27

rolls around and we add all I want for

19:29

Christmas to our holiday playlist, Mariah

19:31

Carey, the songs co writer, co

19:33

producer, and singer. Gets

19:36

paid. So I'm

19:38

with The Wall Street Journal, so you know I'm gonna

19:40

ask you about money. Can

19:42

you If you wanna give me some, you can.

19:46

How how So don't expect much for me.

19:48

Don't expect much for me, Darlene, because I failed

19:50

remedial math.

19:51

Okay? Or not? No.

19:53

No. Sorry. No patience. I know you keep

19:55

a track of that business. So how how much

19:57

do you estimate all I want

20:00

brought in for you last year? Oh,

20:02

I have no idea. I have no idea.

20:04

I know that it's like a like a billion streams

20:06

or something at this point. I I don't know.

20:09

I know very little about all these details.

20:11

Believe it or not. Let's put it this way, not

20:13

as much as it would have if we still had

20:15

physical c d's

20:18

and such what we You know,

20:20

she said, listen, I have no idea

20:22

how much that song makes. But

20:25

I also believe that she probably doesn't

20:27

know how much that song makes I think

20:29

it's such a nebulous part

20:31

of the business and kind of

20:33

infamously hard to delineate

20:36

in the music industry, which has been a real problem

20:38

for a lot of artists. It's very hard to

20:40

sort of track all the different strands of profitability

20:43

for a song. Does anybody understand?

20:45

I'm not doing this because it's like, oh, this

20:48

is such a huge money making opportunity. Yeah.

20:50

We love that. Like you said, We

20:52

love money. We can talk about money. Yay.

20:56

But I really do live from Christmas

20:58

to Christmas, and I really do plan

21:00

for it the whole

21:01

year. And work toys out here.

21:03

Mariah didn't give John a number,

21:05

but he estimates these days the

21:08

song makes at least a million dollars

21:10

a year on streaming alone. But

21:12

that estimate is low because it doesn't

21:14

include other even bigger sources

21:16

of revenue. Like, radio

21:18

play around the world and licensing, including

21:21

for this podcast. When

21:25

we think about money and the Christmas

21:28

season. Generally, people

21:30

are just thinking about retail. Maybe that's

21:32

because it's like the money coming out of our own pockets.

21:35

But every time you hear any

21:37

Christmas song, baby

21:39

it's cold outside, jingle bell rock,

21:41

like, all I want for Christmas

21:44

is you,

21:45

that's money going into someone's

21:47

pocket. It's true and it's a fascinating

21:50

thing that that these songs

21:53

And all kinds of copyrights, whether

21:55

it's Christmas movies, you know,

21:57

Christmas art of any kind, and there's

21:59

this whole kind of blizzard of revenue

22:01

that's happening. Behind the scenes as

22:03

we are streaming these songs and

22:06

spending an every year.

22:07

As for Mariah, she doesn't

22:10

seem to mind just how large this Christmas

22:12

song looms over her career.

22:14

You know what? Yes. I'm always gonna make other

22:16

music. And of course, I love the emancipation

22:18

of Me Me. We could talk about butterfly all day

22:21

long. There's lots of albums, the

22:23

first album, whatever. But

22:25

this whole Christmas moment for me is

22:27

like, I don't know. I'm just I'm

22:29

really thankful. I was telling my friend the other

22:31

day and I said, I'm just thankful

22:33

that I wrote the song because

22:35

it really does make me have be every year.

22:39

Alright. It's such a pleasure, and thank you so much.

22:41

Thank you. Appreciate your Merry Christmas.

22:59

This episode was originally published in

23:01

December of twenty twenty twenty. And a quick note

23:03

before we go, Spotify, which we mentioned

23:05

in this episode, is the parent company of

23:07

Gimlet. And as you know, the journal is

23:09

a co production of Gimlet a Wall Street Journal.

23:12

Music in today's episode by Blue Dot Sessions

23:14

and Mariah

23:15

Carey. Thanks for listening. We'll be back

23:17

with a new episode on Tuesday, January

23:19

third. Until then. Happy

23:22

holidays. Until

23:25

then, Happy

23:26

holidays. Happy holidays. How should

23:29

we count down? Yeah.

23:31

Until then? Happy sorry.

23:33

You count.

23:35

Who's counting? You just, like, point

23:37

or let me or something. Until

23:39

then. Happy holidays. Happy

23:42

holidays. Can

23:44

somebody sync that up in post?

23:49

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