Today, Explained - The Queen of Christmas

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

A quarter-century after its release, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has claimed the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Call it a "Christmas Mariahcle." (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a somewhat stunning twist of fate, today's episode of Today Explained is supported by the Quip Electric Toothbrush Company. If you go to getquip.com slash explained at this very moment, you will get your first Quip refills absolutely free of charge. Think about it. Make a decision. Execute. WVOX FM 98. It's your holiday mix master DJ Sean Holiday Rom-Com here with my co-host. You know him from Switched on Pop. It's a podcast. It's a book. WVOX's very own DJ Cheerly Harding. Cheerly, how is it? Oh, it's great. It is snowing. It is cheery. Perfect, because I want to take us all the way back, Cheerle, way back to Christmas 1994 for a pop hit that's actually

climbing the charts right now in 2019. Now, I don't know about you, Cheerly, but 94, I was playing Super Mario Kart for Super Nintendo, dreaming of a white Christmas up in Toronto. What were you up to? I was just a wee little boy. However, Mariah Carey was at the height of her career, and she and her team were a little worried about putting out a Christmas song because, you know, when you're at the height of your career, you don't usually put out the Christmas single.

That's usually digging for how do I pander to an audience and get another hit. And yet, she did it, and it became one of the most important holiday songs of all time. Something that very few people accomplish because almost all of our Christmas hits come from the past. And the crazy thing about it is this song didn't go number one until 25 years later this month in 2019. Was this song a big deal when it came out back in 1994? Absolutely. This song was an absolute smash, both because of Mariah's incredible vocals and because it did an amazing job of referencing all of the necessary notes you have to hit to make a Christmas song sound nostalgic.

To create a Christmas smash, there are four required elements. The first is that you need to reference the past. You gotta go back. You gotta dig the 40s and the 50s. That's what people hear when they think of Christmas music. They're referencing that old Sinatra sort of style, right? Then in order to get that sound just right, you need the chords that are perfect, that evoke that nostalgic sound. You need to have third, a stunning vocal performance, which Mariah brings. And finally,

you can't have a Christmas hit without some sleigh bells. Let's go through these elements one by one, starting with form. She's doing something kind of different right off the bat, right? What she's doing here is she is establishing a song form which is actually quite old. You see, for the last 75 years, songs as you and I know them have been written in verse chorus form. That's where you have a verse, a chorus, a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a chorus, and a chorus. And like, you know, most songs kind of like take that form and they play with it a little bit and that's a pop song. But she's not doing that. The song that she puts out in 1994 wouldn't sound like anything

that's coming out in 1994. It's written in a structure that was popular in the first era of popular music. It's called A-A-B-A form. This is like the great American songbook songs. These are the Broadway hits. These are the Tin Pan Alley songs that were written from the teens all the way until the 50s when that song form went out of vogue.

And when you're listening to, I don't know, let's say like Let It Snow, that song is written in A-A-B-A form. Instead of having a verse that sort of takes you through anticipation up to a chorus, the first thing you hear is the main melody of the song. In popular music now, we think of like the chorus as the thing you remember. But in old songs, it was the first thing you heard, which was the hook. So if you go to like Let It Snow and you listen to the first verse, here's what you get. Oh, the weather outside is fright hook. So if you go to, like, Let It Snow, and you listen to the first verse, here's what you get. Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. Then what?

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Let it snow is the tag. You get the name of the song. You know exactly what's going to happen. And then what happens next? It doesn't show signs of stopping. And then the song goes to the B section. It's almost like kind of like a bridge. It's this extra new section. If we listen kiss goodnight. It's almost like kind of like a bridge. It's this extra new section.

If we listen to All I Want for Christmas, it's doing the same thing. All I want for Christmas is you. The tag at the end of the A section. That's the hook right there. That is the hook. Yeah. And then the song transforms. The song does go into sort of like a more like Jingle Bell rock version of itself.

It really, it's like the presents are opening. What she's doing here is she is immediately referencing an older style of song. So it might be coming out in 1994, but it's structured like it could have come out in 1938. Does it not technically have a chorus, or is that whole opening passage, which the structure of which is repeated throughout the song, is that like the chorus? Well, here's the thing is like that idea of the chorus is a sort of more contemporary idea. Like we think of the chorus being the climax that happens later with a verse that you build into it. But the first thing we hear kind of acts, yeah, as a chorus. It starts right at the beginning. And so the song, you could think of an A-A-B-A song as almost like chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus. It's

nothing but chorus. Let's move on from the chorus to the chords. What is it about the chords of this song that make it so special, Cheerle? So we established that, you know, to write a great Christmas song, you've got to be looking back to the past. People are remembering family. They're thinking about all of their traditions. And the music that just happens to accompany that reified in culture over and over and over again is that era from the 50s. Now, we don't want to go into the politics of that

sort of nostalgia, but that is the nostalgia people look for for their music. And if you're going there, you've got to use the right chords. In fact, when she transitions from that really dark, brooding, rapping the presence moment into the presence being ripped open and the song turning into this bright, jolly, wonderful moment, she uses this chord progression that is sometimes called the 1950s chord progression. It goes G, E minor C D Wait Charlie, what the hell was that? That was a keyboard, I have this like mini toy keyboard Here, look, check it out, we can even put

We want some toy piano Ugh And that chord progression is This famous chord progression that was just used Over and over and over in the 1950s. So with All I Want for Christmas is You, she references this chord progression to take you back into that other time and then adds all these lush and interesting complex chords that aren't as popular in today's contemporary music. And so in the way she constructs her chords on top of the song form, we're thrown into the past. Okay, Cheerly, I think we've reached the point in our program

where we have to talk about this barn burner of a vocal performance that Mimi gives in All I Want for Christmas is You. A performance I don't even think she's capable of giving anymore, sadly. Well, I think Mariah just sounds fabulous today, and she sounded stunning then. There's one word you need to know, and that is credenza. Credenza? No, not credenza. Cadenza. Oh, credenza.

The credenza is this moment, usually towards the end of a piece, or sometimes maybe at the end of a section of a piece, where there's this great improvised, drawn-out, ornamental element of the performance. And we get it, of course, in Mariah showing off the pinnacle of her vocals, both not only the high, beautiful notes that she can sing, but her capacity to take a single word like is and turn it into the most magical performance. She literally takes is and it becomes like, Oh, I like it so much more when you do it cheerily.

All of a sudden the is becomes this beautiful moment like an ornament on the Christmas tree. And it is the opportunity for Mariah to show off just how great of a singer she is. And right after we get that, we get the sleigh bells. What did I say? You can't have a Christmas hit without some sleigh bells. You hear sleigh bells and it automatically just like time warp wormhole in through the

and then you're out the other side and you're in christmas land because sleigh bells just evoke that sound and boom a christmas classic is birthed it plays so well in a starbucks playlist with frank sinatra with uh nat king cole and of course you have films like love actually i don't want a lot by Mariah herself. She didn't make just one music video of the song. She made, count them, three music videos. And she is such a champ. Every year she's going on social media reposting about this song. She is a part of making sure that its narrative continues to succeed. All I want for Christmas is you The Queen of Christmas and her calling card Christmas anthem wouldn't have made it to number one without streaming.

Streaming has changed the charts, and it's changing the music, too. This is DJ Sean, Rom-Com, Rom-Is-Vorum, and all that and more is coming up in just a minute on Today Explained from WVOX FM 98. But first, this note from our sponsor. It's hard to part ways with something at the end of the year. And I got to say, here we are parting ways with Quip. These are the last times I will talk to you about Quip this year. So just one last set of reminders here that Quip is bravely wagering that if you went and talked to a dentist and said, hey dentist, what is the best toothbrush out there in the game?

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G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained where your first set of Quip refills are free. Happy holidays. Charlie, our hero Mariah Carey's got another number one, but from what I've seen, this moment means more than that for Mariah. This is important for Mariah because for someone whose career has lasted so long, she is now in a place of cementing a legacy that could give her more number one singles possibly than any other artist, depending on how you count the charts. Nonetheless, she is one of the best selling artists and this record shows that she has staying power. You're talking about more number ones than the Beatles, than Elvis,

but I mean, I got to ask, is all I want for Christmas is you only at the top of the charts because of changes to the rules that govern these charts? Rankings in so many industries are frequently, how can I nicely say manipulated without using the word manipulated? Well, I said it manipulated by its industry to help boost the things which are successful. And that there are constantly changing ways that people count things. It's actually really hard to compare what was successful in terms of a number one hit in the 1950s to today. You see, Billboard over the years continues to tweak its algorithm. And one of the things that happened was that Billboard decided that streaming was going to become important. They would start to count streams of music and digital downloads. In 2017, streaming becomes the most important

revenue line and revenue growth for the industry. And so what happens is songs that are succeeding in streaming start to chart more. Those include bizarre outliers like Baby Shark, because it was watched so many times on YouTube. But that also means that every single time you come back around to the holiday music, that music too actually goes back on the charts. If you went back to 1994 when the song came out, by 1995 or 1996, 1997, you've already bought the record once and you're going to play it every year. But each time you spin the song, it didn't count as being on the charts. Now, every time you go to your favorite streaming service and you play the song, that counts towards how it's performing. It's interesting to me that like streaming,

which gives us so many more options at our fingertips, we could go down any musical rabbit hole we want at any given time, is drawing us to this one song that we've all known for a quarter century instead, is streaming driving our musical interests apart or unifying them or both at the same time? Yeah, you know, I think having the agency to be able to reach deep into all the things that you can discover from all the things that are available on streaming. What an amazing world of music. However, the data might say something else. In 2018, Buzz Angle Music, which is a research group that actually is a part of the media company that owns Rolling Stone, they put out a report that showed that the top 10% of albums consumed, they accounted for over 95% of total sales. And worse, the bottom 90% of albums

only accounted for 0.8% of total streams. Right. So people at the top are getting paid and everyone else basically isn't, which is great news for Mariah Carey. I think that we can think about All I Want for Christmas for You and the way that it constantly reinforces its own lifespan. And simultaneously, how we're listening to music maybe year round is actually similarly consolidating around the things which are most popular. It turns out that even when we have agency to listen to whatever we want, we're still interested in listening to what everyone else is listening to because of the social aspect of music, and that pulls us towards some common denominators.

Is it just because it's way easier to just listen to the things you already know and love, or are there other forces at play here? Well, part of it is just about convenience as well as, yeah, knowing what is cool. And part of what's happened is that we have a lot of consolidation around a couple of core listening platforms. And those distributors now have more power than ever. The things that they merchandise, the albums that they put front and center are going to be seen over other music. And most importantly, the playlists that they make are frequently a main source of music discovery that are being pushed towards millions and millions of people. Now, I think a lot of these streaming platforms would also like to say, yeah, but the algorithm is also helping us show you things you might not otherwise discover. And honestly, it does if those are the things you're looking for.

Frankly, though, I think there should be some concern about having such a limited number of distributors with limited screen real estate. It's going to point us to potentially fewer and fewer things. And what does that mean for music, Charlie? I think it's easy to sort of talk about changing technologies, changing music for the worse. And in every era, the technology of how music is heard has definitely changed the sound of music. But I wouldn't say it's subjectively good or bad. It's usually happening a little bit on the margins here. You look at the pop song as 3 minutes and 30 seconds because that's what the phonograph record could hold for time length. The album was only

available when the long playing record could fit, you know, 40-ish minutes onto a record. And so each era has sort of its changes. And one of the things that streaming is doing is that, you know, a stream of a song only counts if someone listens through the first 30 seconds. And so in order to sort of like game that so people don't click away from a song, artists are often putting their chorus or sort of like a mini version of their chorus at the beginning of the song. That way you're immediately hooked in, which I actually think strangely connects us back to Mariah. Because remember how we pointed out how the song is in the A-A-B-A old style form song where the sort of main hook is the first thing that you hear? How can I forget? A lot of contemporary songwriters,

someone like Post Malone, he puts his chorus up front at the beginning of the song in almost all of his hits. You hear the best part of the song, you make sure that you listen through the first 30 seconds. And then you get the full chorus later on, so that there's still a little bit of a treat at the end of the track. I've also heard that artists like Drake have made longer albums because longer albums when you drop a new album means people will be streaming the entire thing and thus more of your songs can climb the charts. That's exactly right. You also get paid more money because, you know, it used to be that you made money by selling the actual physical album itself. And things were really broken apart when Apple successfully got the record labels to agree that you could buy individual songs one by one

digitally off of an album. This was contentious at first, but now the way that things are counted and the way that people are paid by streams, you're paid every single time someone streams at least 30 seconds of your song. If you have a record that's 25 songs long, you might get paid 25 times if someone listens all the way through, rather than if it's only 10 songs long, you're just getting paid 10 times. And you wouldn't say that's a bad thing that streaming has made for longer albums, hooks up front, and even brought Mariah to the top of the charts because of seasonal streams?

That's not ultimately bad for listeners. I think really our job as listeners is to open our ears, to have some comfort with some musical knowledge and say, hey, what is that thing doing? Why is it succeeding? And it's usually a combination, not just of top-down marketing and a label pushing something to you. It's not just the things that you like and your own personal agency. It's the two of those things combined with the effectiveness of the song. So I really challenge people.

Whenever they're like, streaming is hurting music, listen to the song. See what it has to say for itself. DJ Cheerly Harding is better known as Charlie Harding. He's the co-host of Switched on Pop, which is a podcast from Vox, and now it's a book, too, all about how popular music works and why it matters. I'm Sean Ramosverm. This is Today Explained. The show is taking the next couple of days off.

We're back on Boxing Day. Thank you for listening to our show today. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you're enjoying having teeth if you have them. If you want them cleaner than they are right now or a different brush to clean them with, go to getquip.com slash explained. Your first set of refills are free. Unbelievable. Simply irresistible. Everyone loves free. Thanks, Quip.