Christmas on the Charts with Chris Molanphy

Mariah Carey at Christmas time

Slate.com’s chart analyst and historian talks about how changes at Billboard helped Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee, and other Christmas favorites enter the Hot 100.

When singer Eddie Cantor performed "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" near the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1936, people knew it was a hit because of the amount of sheet music sold. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" returned to the charts so regularly in the years following its initial release in 1942 that he followed it up in 1945 with a similar sentiment in "I'll Be Home for Christmas."

Christmas music and the charts have a long history together. Legend has it that Phil Spector, who made his fame producing hit singles, recorded, A Christmas Present for You with Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Shirelles and more because he thought that Billboard's newly created Holiday album chart gave him his best chance of album success.

Writer, critic, and chart historian Chris Molanphy tracks not only how songs perform on the charts but how they work, and as he illustrated last season in an episode of his podcast "The Hit Parade" at Slate.com, changes in chart rules helped Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" reach number one on the Hot 100 in 2019, 25 years after the song's release.

This week I talk to Chris about Christmas music and the charts, and particularly how Billboard factoring streaming into chart positions opened the door for decades-old Christmas favorites to return to the charts and, in many cases, to make the charts for the first time. 

This week's show also includes a first listen to "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" from the upcoming A Holly Dolly Christmas  by Dolly Parton. 

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