For the first time in years, Mariah Carey has been unseated.
With just seven days left until Christmas, Wham!’s melancholy pop classic “Last Christmas” has knocked Carey’s ironclad holiday anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You” off the top of Billboard’s Global 200 chart — ending what had become one of pop music’s most reliable seasonal rituals.
Billboard confirmed that Wham!’s 1984 hit has surged to No. 1 worldwide, marking the first time any Christmas song other than Carey’s has topped the Global 200 since the chart’s launch in September 2020.
It’s a rare crack in the crown.
Since December 2020, Carey’s song has ruled the Global 200 for a staggering 19 weeks, turning December into a predictable coronation. Year after year, the same melody, the same bells, the same slow climb to the summit.
Until now.
Earlier this month, “Last Christmas” had already reached its highest-ever position on the Billboard Hot 100 and Holiday 100 charts, peaking at No. 2 — always just behind Carey. This week, the song finally slipped past her, riding a tidal wave of streams, nostalgia, and seasonal melancholy.
Andrew Ridgeley, the surviving half of Wham!, said he was “delighted” by the news.
“Thank you everyone who has embraced the song as a little piece of their own Merry Christmas,” he said in a statement, paying tribute to the track’s long afterlife — and, implicitly, to the late George Michael, whose voice still haunts the season four decades later.
The upset doesn’t mean Carey’s empire has fallen. Far from it.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” still dominates radio, playlists, shopping malls, office parties, and December itself. Released in 1994, the song has become less a hit than an institution — a seasonal utility as unavoidable as mistletoe or awkward family dinners.
And the money keeps flowing.
Carey is estimated to earn between $2.5 million and $3 million every year from the song’s royalties alone. As of 2017, the track had generated more than $60 million since its release, with co-writer Walter Afanasieff also collecting a hefty share. It remains the most-streamed holiday song of all time.
Every November, Carey ceremonially “defrosts” herself with a viral video announcing the arrival of Christmas. This year’s clip featured Carey scolding a mischievous elf for stealing her lipstick before declaring, in a whistle-high pitch, “It’s time,” and riding off in a sleigh.
The machine remains intact.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” is still the highest-charting holiday single by a solo artist in Billboard Hot 100 history and the only holiday song ever to earn the RIAA’s Diamond Award for 10 million units sold and streamed in the U.S.
Wham!, meanwhile, continues its long victory lap through pop history. Rising to fame in the early 1980s after appearances on Top of the Pops, the duo became one of Britain’s defining acts with hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Club Tropicana,” and “Bad Boys.”
But it’s “Last Christmas” — a song about heartbreak disguised as tinsel — that has outlived them all.
For one week, at least, the holiday season belongs to Wham.
Mariah Carey will almost certainly be back. She always is.
But this Christmas, the bells sound just a little different.
