Every year around this time, there’s a musical inevitability. Like gravity. Like glitter in your coat pockets until March. Mariah Carey arrives.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” is basically the holiday’s emotional North Star. Thirty years old, somehow ageless, both nostalgic and aggressively modern. The moment Thanksgiving leftovers are sealed we all brace ourselves for the memes where Mariah defrosts. We surrender.

And usually, that’s that.

Except this year? Mariah is being gently but firmly nudged aside.

This season, Wham! and Kylie Minogue have entered the chat. Last Christmas has surged back to the top, even briefly dethroning Mariah on the Billboard Global 200, while Kylie’s XMAS claimed the UK’s Christmas #1. The classics are still classic but the mood feels different.

Personally, I have Last Christmas on repeat. Not casually. Not ironically. On repeat-repeat. Bruce Springsteen will always have my heart, but Wham! has my earbuds this year. And that says something.

Because Last Christmas is not a joyful song. Not really. It’s festive-adjacent sadness. Tinsel over heartbreak. Sleigh bells shaking in the background while someone quietly admits they gave their heart away and shouldn’t have.

It’s a song about lost love. About foolish love. About learning the hard way. And yet, we play it while wrapping presents and drinking cocoa like this is totally normal emotional multitasking.

So what does it mean that this is rising to the top right now?

Maybe it means we’re a little more reflective this year. A little less sparkly-surface, a little more emotionally honest. Maybe we’re carrying grief alongside gratitude. Or fatigue alongside hope. Maybe we’re still celebrating, but with an asterisk.

There’s something oddly comforting about a sad song at Christmas. It gives permission. It says that you can feel joy and longing at the same time. You can love the season and still miss someone. You can be wiser than you were last year and still hum along.

Mariah’s song is about wanting. Wham!’s is about remembering. And Kylie’s is about keeping things light while we all collectively hold it together. Together, they form a kind of emotional trilogy about desire, loss, resilience.

Maybe that’s what’s in the air at the end of this year. Not pure cheer. Not pure melancholy. But complexity. A recognition that we’ve lived. That we’ve learned. That we’re still standing and even dancing, despite it all.

So yes, Mariah will always be Queen. Long may she reign.
But this year, if you hear me quietly whisper-singing “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart” while decorating the tree, just know, it’s not sad.

It’s human.