Mariah Carey has debuted a new music video for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The new clip for the 25-year-old holiday classic premiered on a YouTube livestream hosted by Carey on Thursday night, with a live fan Q&A leading up to the video’s midnight premiere.
While the original video features grainy home-shot-styled footage of the singer celebrating the festive season frolicking in the snow as well as enjoying cozy indoor scenes by the tree, the new Joseph Kahn-directed clip captures the childhood wonder and magic surrounding the season. It opens with Carey as part of a store window scene before a door opens to a winter wonderland complete with skating Santas, dancing toy soldiers and giant candy canes. “We wanted to make a modern classic,” Carey said during the Q&A. “It’s kind of the opposite of the original video… This is more of a production.”
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” has steadily turned into one of the most streamed Christmas songs during the month of December each year. This year, it arrived as early as November 1st on Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Songs chart and nabbed the Number One spot during the week of December 12th with a total of over 25 million streams. The song received its own Amazon mini-documentary earlier this month, featuring interviews with Carey herself as well as her collaborators on the single.
This isn’t even the first new music video for “All I Want for Christmas is You” in 2019; in November, Carey released behind-the-scenes footage from the first video set to the song on YouTube.