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Song of the Day #6,380: ‘Santa Tell Me’ – Ariana Grande

Almost all of the Christmas songs that return to the Billboard Top Ten are at least a few decades old. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ was first released in 1994, Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ came out a decade earlier, and perennials like ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’ ‘The Christmas Song,’ and ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ are 60-70 years old.

One notable exception is Ariana Grande’s ‘Santa Tell Me,’ released in 2014 as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of her EP Christmas Kisses. This is the only Christmas song released in the 21st century to reach Billboard’s Top Five.

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Song of the Day #6,379: ‘River’ – LeAnn Rimes

Artists of all stripes put out new Christmas albums each year, but the country singers are particularly fond of the holiday. This year alone, Brad Paisley, Trisha Yearwood, Mickey Guyton, Hunter Hayes, and LeAnn Rimes released new holiday records.

Rimes is so enamored of Christmas music, in fact, that her newest album is titled Greatest Hits Christmas and features songs from the handful of other Christmas projects she’s released over the years (in addition to some new material).

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Song of the Day #6,378: ‘Last Christmas’ – Wham!

One by-product of Billboard including streaming in its chart calculations, in addition to sales and radio play, is the proliferation of Christmas songs in the top ten each December.

Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want is Christmas is You‘ is perhaps the most notable example, as the song reclaims the #1 spot eery year, and this year became the song with the most weeks at #1 in history (20).

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Song of the Day #6,377: ‘Say You, Say Me’ – Lionel Richie

Like yesterday’s Throwback Weekend song, the #1 hit the week of December 21, 1985, was written for a movie. In this case, the film was White Nights, a Cold War drama starring Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov about a pair of dancers trapped in the Soviet Union.

I vaguely remember the film as a solid piece of mid-80s adult entertainment. I imagine the studio was chasing the success of another music-based drama, 1983’s Flashdance. The film had a decent pedigree, with Taylor Hackford directing and Helen Mirren and Isabella Rossellini in supporting roles.

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Song of the Day #6,376: ‘Let’s Do It Again’ – The Staple Singers

Throwing back to the week of December 20, 1975, we find KC and the Sunshine Band atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘That’s the Way (I Like It),’ enjoying a return to #1 a month after it first made it.

At #2, a week before it claimed the top spot, was ‘Let’s Do It Again’ by The Staple Singers. This was the second #1 hit for the R&B quintet, following 1972’s ‘I’ll Take You There.’

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