Why these three biggest Christmas hits return every year, controlling playlists, charts, algorithms, and the soundtrack of the festive season
Since early December, a familiar question tops Google searches: why do we keep hearing the same Christmas songs every year? How does Mariah Carey reliably reclaim the Number One spot as the season unfolds—and why do even global pop stars like Rihanna end up singing All I Want for Christmas Is You at her Apple Music special?
In this piece, Edoardo Passacantando looks past nostalgia and festive clichés to examine what Christmas music has really become in the streaming era. No longer just a tradition or seasonal joy, holiday music now forms an algorithmic loop built on repetition, emotion and cultural automation. From the most played Christmas songs on Spotify and other streaming platforms to the psychology behind why we crave the same holiday music decade after decade, this article explores how a handful of Christmas hits have come to dominate charts, playlists and public spaces—and why escaping them now seems nearly impossible.
Why Do We Hear the Same Christmas Songs Every Year?
December does not begin with a date on the calendar; it begins with a Christmas song. You notice it somewhere between the first cold morning and the first forced smile at the office coffee machine. A supermarket aisle. A café pretending to be cosy. An airport lounge suspended outside of time. You don’t press play; Christmas music finds you. First, a bell pattern you recognise in half a second. Then a voice you’ve known your entire life. Then, inevitably, Michael Bublé.
Mariah Carey. Wham!. Michael Bublé. In that order, or some close variation. Every year. Everywhere.
We tend to call this nostalgia, but that’s not quite right. Nostalgia implies choice, memory, agency. This is closer to cultural programming. These hits don’t just return; they reactivate. They flip a seasonal switch. December is no longer about Advent calendars or decorations—it is about the same most popular Christmas songs, functioning as ritual infrastructure: engineered, emotional, and algorithmically protected.
Why Mariah Carey’s Christmas Hit Still Tops Spotify and the Charts
All I Want for Christmas Is You feels eternal now, but its dominance is relatively new. When it debuted in 1994, it was a hit without being imperial. It sold well, sure, but it didn’t instantly conquer December. For years, it was simply one strong seasonal song among many.
What changed wasn’t the song. It was the system. Streaming didn’t just resurrect Mariah Carey’s Christmas anthem; it revealed what the song had always awaited: a model that rewards repetition, predictability, and ritualised listening. Unlike summer hits, which burn bright and fade fast, Christmas songs are designed to disappear and return. They thrive on absence—being played once a year keeps them from ageing.
Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You was engineered to feel timeless, not trendy. Its Wall-of-Sound homage, gospel-inflected joy, and deliberately retro palette—all were built to bypass the 1990s and land somewhere vague and evergreen. In an algorithm-led listening culture, timelessness became a superpower.
Now the song dominates the charts—climbing back to No. 1 with clockwork precision, turning Mariah Carey from an artist into a seasonal, recurring economic phenomenon—a brand that wakes up once a year, cashes in, and slips back into hibernation.
The Emotional Power Behind Wham!’s Last Christmas
If Mariah Carey represents dominance through structure, Wham!’s Last Christmas endures on through something messier: emotion. It was written quickly, recorded on the fly, and released almost as a seasonal side quest. It barely mentions Christmas at all. No sleigh bells. No snow metaphors. No joy. Instead, it’s a song about humiliation, regret, and knowing you’ll make the same mistake again. That’s precisely why it works.
Last Christmas is about emotional relapse—seeing the same people, feeling the same things, reopening old wounds. That’s what makes it one of the most honest holiday songs ever written. Christmas doesn’t necessarily have to amplify happiness; for many, it magnifies loneliness, forcing reflection and replaying memories we thought were long archived.
Musically, Wham!’s Last Christmas pulls off a trick: bright, upbeat production masking lyrical devastation. It sounds festive enough to pass, sad enough to hurt. Over time, it hasn’t fossilised into a monument but has turned into a template—endlessly covered, meme-ified, and reinterpreted by every generation that needed a safe space to feel blue.
When it finally hit No. 1—thirty-six years later—it wasn’t due to a sudden surge, but an accumulation: proof that some songs don’t peak; they stack sentimental interest. Last Christmas endures because it understands what pop music rarely admits: we don’t crave new feelings or fresh Spotify Christmas playlists every year—we want the same ones, replayed until they feel manageable.
How Michael Bublé Became the Default Christmas Voice
Then there’s Michael Bublé, the most modern figure of them all. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas wasn’t originally his song—it dates back to the early 1950s. Perry Como sang it, Bing Crosby sang it, Johnny Mathis sang it. For decades, it was simply a staple of the Christmas canon.
Michael Bublé didn’t reinvent It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas; he neutralised it. His version is smooth, inoffensive, and seamless. It doesn’t demand attention, but rather blends quietly into the room. It’s not about memory or heartbreak—it’s about crafting a background mood. The song isn’t meant to be felt intensely; it’s meant to be tolerated.
This is Christmas music as environment: sonic wallpaper for capitalism, designed for shops, ads, playlists, airports—spaces where music must exist without interrupting consumption. Today, that function prevails.
Platforms tend to crown a single “definitive” version of each song, with cleaner production replacing character while older recordings quietly fade away. Michael Bublé’s voice becomes the default soundtrack of December—not because it’s iconic, but because it’s efficient. And let it be if it stirs no Christmas memories.
The Hidden System Behind Every December’s Christmas Songs
Taken together, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, Wham!’s Last Christmas and Michael Bublé’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas explain the season’s sonic stranglehold.
Carey represents Christmas as algorithm: a recurring event optimised for platforms. Wham! stands for Christmas as emotional loop: unresolved feelings we return to annually. Bublé embodies Christmas as environment: music engineers to dissolve into the background.
What we call “Christmas music culture” today is often platform logic disguised as nostalgia. These songs persist not because we actively choose them, but because they are structurally hard to escape. They are baked into playlists, retail systems, chart mechanics, and memory itself—and every year, almost without realising it, we press play again.
Edoardo Passacantando
Editor, Milano