Mariah Carey & Wham! Lead Christmas-y TikTok Billboard Top 50
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” holds atop the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart dated Jan. 6, while Wham!’s “Last Christmas” rises to No. 2 to complete a one-two sweep for holiday songs on the tally for the first time.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity Dec. 25-31. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
The beginning of the latest TikTok Billboard Top 50’s tracking week was on Christmas Day, so it’s only natural that Christmas-related tunes dot the chart, led by Carey and Wham! at Nos. 1 and 2. It’s the second week at No. 1 for “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” while “Last Christmas” reaches a new peak after previously rising to No. 4 the preceding week (Dec. 30, 2023).
Concurrently, Carey’s holiday standard appears at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 (down from No. 1 after being passed by Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” as previously reported), while Wham!’s “Last Christmas” spends a fourth week at No. 4.
The two songs are chased on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 by Lesley Gore’s 1963 song “Misty,” which debuts at No. 3. The jazz standard was originally recorded in 1954 by Erroll Garner and has also been recorded by artists such as Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby, Aretha Franklin and, more recently, Laufey.
Gore’s “Misty” makes major strides via a variety of trends and posts, including one where the user posts themselves without something (glasses, curls, etc.) and another with those things, sometimes using a photo of them with a friend that actually has that feature.
As such, some of the uploads also reference creators waiting to be used as their friends’ reference photos in the trend.
The latest Billboard tracking week (Dec. 22-28) saw “Misty” jump 23% to 244,000 official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Adele’s “When We Were Young” joins “Misty” as songs making their first appearances in the TikTok Billboard Top 50, leaping from a No. 24 debut to No. 8 in its second week. A trend using the song involves showing off older photos of themselves with loved ones. The No. 14 hit on the Hot 100 in March 2016 sports a 4% jump in streams to 1.7 million listens.
A song zooming toward the top 10 is Grace Potter’s “Something That I Want,” which like “When We Were Young” debuted on the Dec. 30, 2013, survey (at No. 32), rising on the latest list to No. 12. Potter’s track is part of the soundtrack to Disney’s 2010 animated film Tangled. As of now, the song is mostly being used in a variety of trending uploads, including one that features the creator pretending to hold someone up at gunpoint on the “I want something that I want” verse.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
Kevin Rutherford
Billboard
