You've become the patron saint of officially informing the public when it's time to get into the holiday spirit. Are you fully in it right now, or is it something you still need to warm up to?
We released the deluxe edition of Merry Christmas [this month]. So, obviously, I had to get into that spirit [early]. I personally like to wait till after Thanksgiving to really get gung-ho.
Merry Christmas and its lead single, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” turn 25 this year. Does the anniversary of the song matter much to you, especially when it now feels so ingrained in the holiday season?
I rebuke time. I have a thing where I just live outside the traditional realm of how we measure [it]. So in that way, Santa and myself are very similar. But I'm excited about the 25th anniversary. It's like everything coming together to give the song a celebratory moment.
Was there a specific point when you realized “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became part of the Christmas lexicon?
The British Royal Navy did something where an entire shipload of [people] sang each part of the song. It was such an amazing thing to see happen. I've seen videos of people in Holland during the middle of summer screaming “All I Want” at the top of their lungs. But the main thing is when people come to me and say, “We love ‘All I Want for Christmas.’ We listen to it all year long.”
Which is funny since you were initially hesitant about putting out your first Christmas album.
That is true, and that's because it was so early in my career. I didn't feel, from a strategic point of view, that it was time to do something like that. As much as I love Christmas, I thought that the record company was off. Obviously, I couldn't have been more wrong.
What do you remember about writing and recording the song?
I wrote the beginning and the middle on the keyboard in a little house in Upstate New York, in a room by myself. I just started thinking about all things Christmas and growing up as a kid that loves Christmas. I think that's why it's such a festive record. Somebody said the other day, “It's the saddest Christmas song ever, because you're like, ‘I don't care about all these things. I just want this other person’.” And I guess that was my thing. I wanted to put a love twist onto a Christmas song, two of my favorite things in the world… I don't usually start writing on the piano. I'm not a piano player. But sometimes the biggest songs for me come [from] just sitting down at the piano and messing around. So I brought it to [co-writer Walter Afanasieff]. I had already written most of the song, and we worked on the bridge and produced it together.
Some of the song's best moments are the background vocals. You of course sing lead when performing, but have you ever had an urge to do the “and I”s instead?
Doing background vocals is one my favorite things. I got my first paying job as a singer when I was 12, singing background vocals in a session I walked to by myself. When I listen to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which is only at Christmastime, and it goes into that outro [harmonies]… to me, that's the happiest part of the song… I usually sing the “and I”s when we're just celebrating Christmas [at home].
You must get a ton of requests to use the song in film and TV. But Love Actually is one of the few that it's in. How do you decide what is worthy for inclusion?
Love Actually happened early in the song's life. And I'm happy I did that. But I've been very selective about what I allow the song to be a part of because it really matters to me. I don't want to give it to anybody. It's not about the person. It's just, is this the right look?
The song is one of the best-selling singles of all time, which makes it your most successful, commercially speaking. Do you consider it your most successful from a songwriting standpoint?
As a songwriter, I look at some of those songs from Butterfly, or “Looking In” from Daydream, or “My Saving Grace” from Charmbracelet, where I know how deep I went as a writer. But “All I Want for Christmas Is You” gives me a feeling of happiness I can't describe, so it's a different thing. Yes, it's a hugely successful song. Do I think it's the best song that I've ever written? I don't know how to judge that. [But] it has its own place for me.
