A 30-Year-Old Christmas Song Becomes Billboard Hot 100’s Longest-Running No. 1

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” first released in 1994, has become the longest-running No. 1 song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. The track reached a cumulative 20 weeks at the top of the chart during the December 14–20, 2025 tracking period, surpassing all previous chart leaders in the ranking’s 67-year history.

The milestone places a three-decade-old Christmas song above modern chart juggernauts such as Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” underscoring how seasonal streaming and evolving chart rules have reshaped music consumption.

Twenty weeks at No. 1

With its 20th week at No. 1, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” now stands alone as the longest-reigning chart-topper in Hot 100 history. Both “Old Town Road” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” previously held the benchmark at 19 weeks each.

Only a small fraction of Hot 100 leaders have sustained extended dominance. According to Billboard data, roughly four percent of all No. 1 songs have remained at the summit for 10 weeks or longer.

What makes Carey’s achievement distinct is how those weeks were accumulated. While “Old Town Road” led for 19 consecutive weeks in 2019 and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” did the same from mid-2024 into late autumn, Carey’s holiday single reached No. 1 across seven consecutive Christmas seasons. The song topped the chart for three weeks in 2019, two in 2020, three in 2021, four in 2022, two in 2023, four in 2024, and two more in 2025.

Across its entire chart life, the track has now spent 77 weeks on the Hot 100, tying Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” for the longest-charting song by a female artist.

A record built over decades

Beyond the performance of a single song, the achievement adds to Carey’s broader chart legacy. She has now accumulated 99 total weeks at No. 1 across her career, the most of any artist in Hot 100 history, with chart-toppers spanning four different decades from the 1990s through the 2020s.

What makes the new record particularly notable is the timeline. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” took 25 years from its release to reach No. 1 for the first time in December 2019, the longest such gap in Hot 100 history for a chart-topping song.

A song that initially could not chart

When Carey released “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in November 1994, Billboard’s chart rules prevented it from appearing on the Hot 100. At the time, songs were required to be issued as commercial singles to qualify. Carey’s track was available only as an album cut on her holiday release Merry Christmas.

That policy changed in 1998, allowing album tracks to chart based on airplay. Even then, the song’s progress was gradual. It made its Hot 100 debut in January 2000, peaking at No. 83 for a single week before dropping off the chart.

The song did not enter the top 10 until 2017, reached the top five in 2018, and finally claimed the No. 1 position in December 2019, a full quarter-century after its debut.

What shifted was not the composition itself, but the way audiences accessed it.

“The song has always been a hugely impactful and important song for us, but its cultural influence reached a whole new level around the 25th anniversary in 2019,” Monica Cornia, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Music Entertainment, told Billboard.

Streaming platforms now allow listeners to choose specific tracks instantly rather than relying on radio rotation. Curated and algorithm-driven holiday playlists on services such as Spotify and Apple Music repeatedly surface established favorites each December, reinforcing the dominance of well-known seasonal songs.

The company Carey now leads

The record for the longest-running No. 1 has changed hands only a handful of times since the Hot 100 began in 1958.

Debby Boone set the early benchmark in 1977 when “You Light Up My Life” spent 10 weeks at No. 1. That record stood until 1992, when Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” extended it to 13 weeks. Whitney Houston followed months later with 14 weeks at the top for “I Will Always Love You.”

In late 1995, Carey and Boyz II Men set a new standard when “One Sweet Day” logged 16 weeks at No. 1, a record that lasted more than two decades. “Despacito” tied the mark in 2017 before Lil Nas X pushed it to 19 weeks with “Old Town Road” in 2019. Shaboozey matched that total earlier this year.

Carey has now surpassed them all. She is also the only artist to have held the longest-running No. 1 record twice, first with “One Sweet Day” and now with her Christmas single.

The cumulative debate

Unlike previous record holders, Carey’s 20 weeks at No. 1 were not consecutive. They were spread across multiple chart cycles, a point that has prompted debate among chart watchers.

Only one other song, Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” previously accumulated No. 1 weeks across separate chart runs, leading for three weeks in 1960 and again in 1962. Some analysts argue that cumulative and consecutive reigns should be tracked separately.

Billboard does not make that distinction.

Supporters of Carey’s record argue that the recurring dominance itself is the achievement. While other long-running No. 1 songs burned brightly for limited periods, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has returned to the top of the chart every December, averaging roughly three weeks at No. 1 per holiday season since 2019.

Can the record be broken?

The durability of Carey’s record reflects the slow evolution of holiday music standards. More than half a century separated Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” era from Carey’s emergence as the dominant modern Christmas anthem.

Any potential challenger would likely need to follow the same seasonal pattern, combining broad cultural recognition with annual streaming surges at a global scale. No contemporary holiday song currently approaches that level of saturation.

If current trends continue and Carey’s song averages several weeks at No. 1 each December, its cumulative total could continue to rise for years. Billboard staff have suggested the record may stand indefinitely.

“At the end of the day, ‘Christmas’ became the longest-running No. 1 of all time by virtue of being one of the most popular and beloved pop songs of all time,” Billboard writer Andrew Unterberger noted.

For now, the achievement highlights how streaming-era listening habits and seasonal playlists have reshaped chart history, allowing a decades-old song to outperform modern hits—one December at a time.