In early September, when the sun still felt like it was auditioning for a job in the equator and Christmas felt like a distant rumour, I wrote about Mariah Carey finally getting her flowers in the form of the MTV Video Vanguard Award. I made the case that Mariah was never just a singer with glass-shattering notes. She has always been a storyteller — visually, musically, emotionally — and that her upcoming album Here For It All wasn’t meant to be a chart juggernaut. It was a strategy piece, a slow-burn ignition, a Charmbracelet-type transition before the real explosion.
Back then, I said her Spotify monthly listeners were at around 27 million, slowly rising, dipping, rising again as fans tried to piece together the breadcrumb trail she was dropping. Fast forward to the album release: the number pushed up to 38 million. And now — with the faint jingle of holiday bells starting to creep into supermarket playlists — she is sitting at a staggering 66 million monthly listeners.
Let me repeat that: 66 million, and we’re not even in the thick of December yet.
Mariah isn’t just experiencing a resurgence. She’s conducting a masterclass in longevity. And she is doing it in an industry that has the shelf-life of unrefrigerated milk.
The Machinery Behind the Myth
I said it in my earlier piece: the whole point of Here For It All wasn’t to produce a number-one album. Mariah doesn’t need that. She’s already the artist with the most number-one singles of any solo artist in Billboard Hot 100 history.
What she needs — what she has been strategically building — is momentum. Momentum that would lift All I Want for Christmas Is You back to the top of the charts, allowing it to clinch two more weeks at No. 1. Just two. Because with those two weeks, the song would become the longest-running number-one hit in Billboard Hot 100 history.
She isn’t competing; she’s completing a legacy.
And the results? As of this writing, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has climbed to Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard reported it with the kind of excitement journalists usually reserve for stock market surges and pop culture scandals. And everyone in the industry feels the same way: the reindeer haven’t even fully woken up yet.
Mariah isn’t chasing relevancy — she’s pulling the industry calendar behind her like a sleigh.
The Vanguard Case, Reopened and Proven
I remember laying out Mariah’s resume like a lawyer arguing a case: Fantasy, Always Be My Baby, The Roof, and her later co-directed projects like You’re Mine (Eternal). These weren’t side quests — they were visionary statements.
Her 1995 Fantasy video was self-directed in an era where women in the industry were expected to show up, be beautiful, and let male directors manage the “real work.” But Mariah said nope, I’m wearing rollerblades and I’m taking creative control.
By the time she reached The Roof in 1998, she was crafting atmospheric, moody visuals critics still call “one of the most cinematic videos of the era.” Entertainment Weekly once described it as “a storm you want to live inside,” which is possibly the most Mariah line ever written by a non-Mariah.
Then there’s her narrative work: directing A Christmas Melody for Hallmark in 2015 — a feat critics from Variety admitted was “unexpectedly warm and surprisingly assured.” In 2020, she produced Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special, which became one of Apple TV+’s most-streamed holiday releases that year, according to Apple’s internal reporting cited in entertainment news.
When you line all this up against past Vanguard winners — Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Michael Jackson — the comparison stops feeling like a defense and starts feeling like a coronation.
Missy plays in futurism, Beyoncé works in world-building, Michael mastered cinematic spectacle. Mariah? She builds interiority. She shoots emotion. She frames longing. She captures nostalgia. And this is not lesser; it is simply different. Critics from Rolling Stone once called her “the architect of intimacy.”
And intimacy is harder to pull off than spectacle.
Charmbracelet, MC17, and That Deliciously Slow Ascent
Back then, I argued Here For It All was her Charmbracelet moment — the quiet before the storm. History is beginning to agree with me.
When Charmbracelet came out in 2002, critics greeted it like it was a polite handshake. Meanwhile, Mariah was already working on the blueprint for The Emancipation of Mimi, which would go on to dominate 2005, earn major awards, and sit comfortably among the greatest comeback albums in modern music.
Here For It All is doing the same thing. It isn’t an album begging for radio. It isn’t sprinting for viral TikTok moments. It’s laying groundwork. It’s reintroducing Mariah not as a legacy act, but as an artist with something left to say in the streaming age.
And the streaming age is finally treating her like royalty.
Her numbers didn’t spike because of nostalgia. They spiked because she and Gamma — the music company now backing her — have clearly figured out the formula:
Slow drip content.
Seasonally timed releases.
Cross-platform visibility.
And a return to yearly productivity, which was Mariah’s original pace in the ’90s.
I have a feeling — and this is based on instinct, trend, and the energy radiating from her recent interviews — that we may get another album next year. Not a low-key, experimental one. A real, proper, butterfly-spreading-its-wings album. The kind that says, “I’m back, darling.”
What the Industry Really Thinks of Her
One of my favourite things is digging up what other artists say about Mariah — not the memes, not the fan jokes, but the real professional admiration.
Adele once said in a BBC radio interview that Mariah’s songwriting is “so underrated people don’t even realise how many hits she wrote herself.”
Beyoncé told V Magazine that Mariah “is one of the blueprints,” especially for women who write, produce, and manage their own sound.
Bruno Mars once joked during a concert that “Mariah is the Christmas boss,” and the crowd roared because everyone knew it was true.
And Kelly Clarkson — the patron saint of belters — said on her talk show that Mariah’s vocal arrangements “should be studied in universities.” Honestly, if universities can have modules on Harry Potter and Beyoncé, they can certainly have MC101: Whisper Register Strategy and Emotional Layered Harmony Construction.
Even critics have softened. The New York Times once called her “a composer in a diva’s clothing,” and that was during a period when critics weren’t exactly generous to her.
Mariah inspires admiration not because she demands it, but because she outlives every cycle, every trend, every snarky remark.
She plays the long game. And the long game always wins.
The Mythology of Mariah (Every Diva Has One)
Every great icon has a mythic quality. Aretha had the myth of divine authority. Whitney had the myth of the voice blessed by angels. Beyoncé has the myth of unstoppable work ethic. Taylor Swift has the myth of storybook authorship.
Mariah? Hers is the myth of the butterfly.
She has referenced it for decades — in art, in interviews, in metaphors. The butterfly as transformation, the butterfly as fragility and strength, the butterfly as the creature that floats rather than fights yet still reaches spectacular heights.
And maybe that’s why her December dominance feels less like a comeback and more like a migration pattern. Butterflies return. They always return.
In Filipino folklore, butterflies are believed to carry the spirits of loved ones visiting for a moment. In many Malay folktales, the kupu-kupu is seen as a symbol of rebirth, flitting between worlds. In Greek myth — which Mariah probably read in school — the soul itself is often portrayed as a butterfly.
Mariah’s career is a continuous metamorphosis: from ingénue to auteur, from disaster headlines to chart royalty, from cautionary tale to case study in reinvention.
Every December, the butterfly doesn’t just emerge. It commands the season.
And Now? The Present Moment Feels Delicious
We are days, maybe weeks, away from witnessing history again. All I Want for Christmas Is You at #5 is already impressive — but we know this pattern. December is a wave, and Mariah is the surfer who invented the board.
With the rise in her monthly Spotify listeners, the renewed attention from Here For It All, and the machinery of Gamma pushing her visibility, the probability of hitting #1 again is not a dream. It’s math.
Two more weeks at the top.
That’s all she needs.
Two weeks to transform a cute holiday hit into a record-breaking titan.
And once that happens, I don’t think she’s stopping. I agree with myself (which is always fun): this is the transition era. The slow ascend. The moment before the fireworks. If she returns to her old pattern of releasing music annually, 2025 might actually be the beginning of her third imperial phase.
The Butterfly Takes Flight
So here is how I see it. The world is cold. The year is ending. Lights are going up. Trees are being decorated. And somewhere out there, Mariah is gearing up — vocally, emotionally, strategically — for her annual migration back to the top of the charts.
Picture it: a winter landscape, soft, glowing. Snow drifting like confetti. A single butterfly lifts itself against the cold, wings shimmering. It shouldn’t survive winter, and yet somehow, it does. It doesn’t just live — it glides upward, finding warmth where there shouldn’t be any, finding light in a season defined by grey.
That’s Mariah.
That has always been Mariah.
Every year, she returns.
Every year, she rises.
Every year, she reminds us that longevity isn’t luck — it’s flight.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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