Billboard Hot 100: 12/30/2023

[hughster1]

Dec 28, 2023 7:30:17 GMT -5 ificanthaveyou said:

Dec 27, 2023 23:05:43 GMT -5 leonagwen said:

AIWFCIY might be the most perfect pop song ever. Other big time artists need to try to record new Christmas songs. Ariana and Kelly have released new Christmas songs in the last few years but it seems like no one can top Mariah. It just gets gets tiresome seeing the same Christmas songs in the top 10 year after year.Artists need to step it up and create new Christmas classics.

You just don’t “create Christmas classics” overnight though… classics usually take years and years to become established and they rely on nostalgia and time passing for them to really hit their stride. I wonder when people starting to declare AIWFCIY to be a “Christmas classic”?

Underneath the Tree and Santa Tell Me are the clear favorites to become the “classics” of this generation regardless of their Hot 100 peaks.

"AIWFCIU" got a lot of attention right from the start; upon its release it hit #12 on Hot 100 airplay and #6 AC (this was for the most part before most AC stations switched to 24/7 holiday music after Thanksgiving). It hit those two charts again the next two years. So you always heard it, but it didn't have the ubiquity it has today. It probably started to become a "classic" in the early 2000's. A cover performance in "Love Actually" helped, plus people who were kids and tweens when it came out hit young adulthood, so it began to be considered nostalgic at that point, and I'd say that's when it began to go into the "classic" category. Starting in 2005 it topped the Recurrent Chart (RIP) for four years.

It's also interesting how recordings fall out of favor over time. You can see some of this on the Holiday 100 chart. Records down towards the bottom of the chart have much higher chart positions, indicating that they used to be much more popular. Two that I remember being huge back in the day that have now faded quite a bit are "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" by Bruce Springsteen (peaked at #16, currently #63) and "Merry Christmas Darling" by the Carpenters (peaked at #24, currently #96). And of course, one song that was huge in the 80's and has now almost completely disappeared is "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."