For about one month every year, regardless of the state of her career, Mariah Carey is relevant thanks to the endurance of practically everyone’s favorite Christmas song, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” In fact, this year, it went Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in its 21 years in existence (this is mostly due to Billboard’s regularly shuffling rules for the tally, which currently allow recurrent tracks to chart, regardless of age).
Since its release in 1994, Carey has remixed and redone this song several times, because she is an overachiever who isn’t content to rest on her laurels (that’d probably be uncomfortable, anyway, since in this case they’re made of holly). They don’t call her the Queen of Christmas for nothing. I’m not sure how many people actually call her that, but she was referred to as such in an official press release in 2013. I can’t think of a more appropriately modern coronation.
The world only really needs one “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (it’s the one that gets the vast majority of the airplay and sales, and always has been), but since there are many, the spirit of Christmas and its Queen compel us to rank them: