Mariah Carey talks ‘timeless’ quality of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’

When Mariah Carey penned “All I Want For Christmas Is You” nearly 30 years ago, she never thought it would become the holiday staple that it is today.

“Did I know? That it would be this anthem? No, I didn’t,” she admitted to KTLA 5’s Sam Rubin. “Normally, when people ask me questions, like the ‘did you know?’ type thing, I pretty much say ‘Yeah, I knew, I had an idea.’

“With this, I didn’t know. It was the first Christmas song I’d ever written. I just wanted it to be real to me like to my little girl self. It was like, what are the things I think about Christmas? What did I not want? What did I wish for? You know, all that kind of stuff.”

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While the song is decades old, many can’t tell because it still feels topical and new. This is something the Grammy-winning singer did on purpose.

“When I first wrote it, I wanted it to be timeless. I didn’t want it to be something that felt like a specific year. I wanted it to be something that I could have heard as a little kid growing up, like, I don’t know what version of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ I heard as a kid or ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland,’ I just know that I loved those songs. So I wasn’t thinking ‘Oh, my song is going to be as big as those songs.’ I was just like, let me do something that makes me feel like I’m getting the experience of listening to a classic.”

The songstress’s expansive music catalog, even her rendition of holiday classics, has become a soundtrack to people’s lives.

“It makes me happy because it’s talking about, for the most part, songs that I’ve written,” she said. “That’s literally the soundtrack of my life because I wrote them. It’s pretty amazing. A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, we listened to your Christmas album in July. Like, we don’t care what month it is. We just love it.’ So that’s pretty great.”

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Over the years, Carey has been crowned the Queen of Christmas, and she’s taking that show on the road for her Merry Christmas One and All tour. She also plans on including some of her other hits as well.

“I just want to have fun with my fans and enjoy the holiday season!” she exclaimed. “Also (I’m) doing some songs that are from my regular catalog that are not holiday songs that are No. 1 records I must have written while I was. like I said this before, but while I was frozen.”

The singer making fun of the joke that she’s put on ice once the holiday season ends. She cheekily touched on that in a social media post on Nov. 1.

Carey’s Merry Christmas One and All stops at the Hollywood Bowl on Nov. 17 and 19.

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