By Jacinto Caballero-George
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey has become a staple for the Christmas season. People often refer to her “defrosting” for the Christmas season—not to mention her famous “It’s Time” videos she posts after Halloween. Lots of people consider this song to be the Christmas song, but the truth is, this song sucks.
The lyrics to this song are all over the place, just listing off as many Christmas things as possible in one song and jumping from one thing to another as fast as possible in between repeating the words “all I want for Christmas is you” and “I don’t want a lot for Christmas” in various ways.
The song just wants to put as many traditional Christmas things in it to cover all their bases. This happens in many other Christmas songs, as well, trying to make sure as many holiday activities as possible are there to attract the most people possible so no one feels left out.
It’s an obvious cash grab that Carey didn’t even write herself! A man named Walter Afanasieff wrote most of the song. Carey only gave him concepts of a song. Then, the song was quickly thrown together in just an hour. “That one went very quickly. It was an easier song to write than some of the other ones. It was very formulaic, not a lot of chord changes,” Afanasieff said. The song was basic and made to be catchy enough for people to listen to—not to be a good, thought out song written with passion.
A more obvious reason the song is a cash grab is the person solely being referred to as “you.” This is a common practice used in music made by popular creators to feed into parasocial relationships, benefiting the artist.
Find A Psychologist says parasocial relationships, “Are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence.” These are usually the relationship between a fan and a celebrity.
Using parasocial relationships to make your audience spend money to support you or to listen to a song over and over is manipulating your audience. Maraih Carey is not the first or last celebrity to use parasocial relationships to their advantage, but she is a good example of using one.
Celebrities commonly write love songs with no description of the person, or use “you” in more severe cases, so their fans are able to imagine that they are the person the artist is singing about.
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” is a meaningless cash grab, made with no passion or emotion–just a song catering to parasocial relationships, using them to increase popularity, containing a repetitive upbeat tune to distract people from the scattered, bad lyrics.
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