Though you personally may be sick of hearing, for the 60th time, Mariah Carey sing All I Want for Christmas is You, there is a reason the radio stations, SiriusXM, and Macy’s keep playing the song. According to Billboard, it’s the number 1 song on their curated chart, “Greatest of All Time Holiday 100.”
Billboard started their ranking system 111 years ago by publishing a best-selling list of sheet music. Since reading music is a lost art form, they’re known now—and since 1936—for their record/album/song charts.
For the holidays, I looked at their “Greatest of All Time” chart and though I question their editorial decision to not just call it Greatest of All Time Christmas 100, it’s a fun way to look at the holiday season.
The Charts
Though you can view Billboard’s chart at the link above, here is a chart of the chart which is interactive:
Though there is no publish date on their chart, the newest song is from 2018. I’m unsure if the folks at Billboard have not updated it in a few years or if there hasn’t been a new classic that deserves to be on the list since that would inevitably bump some of the above (I have some suggestions).
On the opposite side of that date spectrum is the earliest song on the chart, 1943’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” sung by none other than Bing Crosby. There has been a fairly steady stream of hits from every decade since then.
Though you might question more than 1/5 of the best songs being in the 2010s, the classics have some staying power; more than half of the chart is made up of songs from the 1970s and earlier.
Of course many of these songs on the chart are repeats or covers. Or covers of covers. If you were to remove duplicate songs sung by other artists, the Top 100 would be the Top 73. That’s because 22 of the songs are the chart are different versions of the same song (and some have more than 2 appearances).
“It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas”, a classic written by Meredith Wilson (he’s a music man) in 1951 was first made popular by Perry Como followed by Bing Crosby in the same year (charted at 33 and 38 respectively). In 1986 Johnny Mathis would record the song (beating out Bing and Perry and charting 29th). A few years later this version would get a revival in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as it plays as Kevin gets his very own cheese pizza and a limousine.
Winning Artists
When it comes to the artists (mostly in this case the “singers”), 56 songs are sung by just 18 artists on the Billboard 100. Bing Crosby and Andy Williams, two singers known more for their Christmas music than anything else, certainly made the chart more than once. But the artist with the most hits might surprise you.
Michael Bublé runs away with the number of songs on the Billboard chart. Though, to be fair, he probably has release a few dozen Christmas songs on multiple albums. He even has a duet with Dolly Parton (who sadly does not have a song on this chart) complete with an original, animated music video.
Instrumental
Though most of the “artists” on the chart are singers, that’s not the whole picture. There are just three songs on the chart that don’t have lyrics (some might want to call them “tunes” or simply “instrumental music” rather “songs”).
All three of the instrumental-only songs above certainly deserve to be on the Billboard chart (placing 53rd, 11th, and 34th in that order). It would have been nice to see a few more instrumental songs (perhaps John Williams’ Home Alone Suite?), but alas, we had to make room for stand-up-guy Chris Brown’s version of “This Christmas” (re: suggestions from above).
The Lyrics
The plus of having 97 out of 100 of the Billboard hits being songs with words is that we can see what these Christmas songs tend to be about. After filtering out stop words (like a, the, is, etc.), below are the most common words in these 97 songs.
(I once again question the decision of Billboard not to just call their chart a Christmas chart.)
“Christmas,” not surprisingly, is the most common word amongst all the songs. Though it is a little ironic since the word has no perfect rhyme in the English language. My favorite word above, though, is the word “pum.” And if you’re wondering what that word is and why it’s seemingly used more than the word “fun” or “mistletoe,” then I’d suggest you listen to one of the two versions of The Little Drummer Boy that made the Billboard chart.
Here’s a table with a few dozen of the most commonly used words and the number of times they occurred in the lyrics of these songs:
Happy Chanukah?
With the absence of any Chanukah songs in the Billboard chart (no Adam Sandler?), I looked elsewhere to find a Chanukah specific list. And wouldn’t you know it, after a quick search, Billboard published a list of 16 Hanukkah Songs to Light Up This Year back in 2022.
But after I looked at the first chart topping hit, something called “Happy Chinooka” by—I kid you not—Gangstagrass & Kosha Dillz, I decided against a similar analysis like that of the above.
(And Adam Sandler’s classic was number 9 on that list right after a song by rapper Too $hort and right before Barbara Streisand singing “Avinu Malkeinu” which is a song for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—most certainly not a Chanukah song.)
Jewish Influence
Despite a disheartening Chanukah investigation, the Jewish people haven’t been completely left out of this Holiday list. Why not?
Of the top 10 songs of the Billboard Greatest of All Time Holiday 100, an astonishing 80% of them are written by Jewish composers and/or lyricists!
Only “All I Want for Christmas is You” and “Feliz Navidad” (shocking, I know) were not written by Jews. And if you’re looking closely, yes, I’m counting George Michael (born with a suspiciously Greek name, Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou) of Wham! as Jewish. Though he wasn’t raised Jewish, he found out later in life that his maternal grandmother was Jewish (i.e. his mother was Jewish) but out of fear of persecution of being Jewish in 1930s Europe, she didn’t raise her family Jewish.
“Let it Snow”—which made the chart twice as sung by both Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin—was written by the music and lyrics team of Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. Both Jewish. Sure, it certainly could be passed off as just a “Holiday” or “Winter” song as it doesn’t mention Christmas at all.
But “White Christmas” or “The Christmas Song” or “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” are timeless Christmas songs. And chart toppers according to Billboard. And they were all written by people who didn’t light a Christmas tree, but rather a menorah in December.
Even “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was written by the Jewish Johnny Marks (fun fact: he is the great-uncle of economist and author of the book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt). The song, of course, was based on the eponymous story created by Robert L. May who naturally grew up in a Jewish home in Westchester County, NY.
Honorable Mention
Though this song did not make Billboard’s 100 Best list, it did chart at #5 in 1963 and has gone surprisingly under the radar for the past 60 year. Allan Sherman is best known for his “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” but his special Christmas song outshines that hit. He’s been called “the Larry David, the Adam Sandler, the Sacha Baron Cohen of 1963.” Here’s satirist, parodist, and singer Allan Sherman singing his hilarious version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” (Yes, he was also Jewish.)