Taylor Swift has the top album and song in the country yet again, as The Life of a Showgirl and "The Fate of Ophelia" hold down the No. 1 spots for a sixth consecutive week. But even as sombr and Rosalía hit new career highs, there's a major churn taking place just below the top 10, as Mariah Carey, Wham! and their cheerful ilk gear up for yet another jingling assault on the charts.
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Last week, the Billboard charts absorbed the full force of spooky season, as a weekend of Halloween parties produced a Hot 100 full of scary-ish songs and a return to the top 10 for Michael Jackson's "Thriller." At the same time, a different holiday began its annual attack on the chart, as two Christmas classics — Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and Wham!'s "Last Christmas" — made an auspiciously early return.
A week later, "Thriller" and their ilk have been sent back to molder in their crypts once more, while Christmas streamers who couldn't wait for Thanksgiving (you know who you are) have gone ham — and not in the seasonally appropriate, honey-glazed way — on the Hot 100. We should consider it a small win that none of them crash the top 10, but with "All I Want for Christmas Is You" at No. 11 and "Last Christmas" at No. 13, we're merely delaying the inevitable here.
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" came this close to thwarting a major career milestone: As "Back to Friends" ticks up a spot to No. 10, sombr has become just the 10th artist to hit the Hot 100's top 10 for the first time in 2025. Another would-be first-timer came close this week, as country star Cody Johnson debuts on this week's chart at No. 12 with his cover of "Travelin' Soldier." The track, written by Bruce Robison and popularized by the act known at the time as The Dixie Chicks, has become a signature song for Johnson; his 2022 performance of "Travelin' Soldier" has accumulated 59 million views on YouTube, and now it's got a studio version to match. But if he's going to hit the top 10 for the first time in his career — this is his eighth time hitting the Hot 100 — he's probably gonna have to wait until January.
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The Hot 100 isn't the only major Billboard chart to welcome a first-timer to its top 10: Spanish polymath Rosalía, whose 2022 album Motomami peaked at No. 33, blows away that career high as Lux debuts at No. 4. For an album that expands her sound well beyond chart-friendly genres — she recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra — Lux wasn't necessarily an easy sell as a pop hit. Future weeks will tell the full story, of course, as an initial sales burst gives way to word of mouth and what will likely be a tsunami of placements on "Best Albums of 2025" lists.
The other top 10 debut is also a first-timer, but with an asterisk: Yeonjun, a member of the K-pop boy band Tomorrow X Together, lands at No. 10 with his first solo effort, No Labels: Part 01. Tomorrow X Together is a frequent visitor to the top 10, but Yeonjun now has a hit of his own.
There's one other serious chart breakthrough worth noting this week: After months of teasing and leaked tracks — and after entering the Billboard 200 albums chart at No. 173 last week — Paramore's Hayley Williams makes a huge jump with her new solo record, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. Buoyed by an official release and the addition of two new tracks, the album zips all the way to No. 12.
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"All I Want for Christmas Is You" and "Last Christmas" are just two of the nine holiday songs in this week's top 50, and the order in which they appear is instructive. Because, while it might seem as if the exact same holiday songs appear on each year's charts in roughly the exact same order, it's possible to plot out incremental shifts in audience preferences, year over year.
For example, there was a moment when Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" seemed to be overtaking "All I Want for Christmas Is You" — roughly around the time the still-living Lee released a video in 2023 for her 1958 hit. But in the time since, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" has ceded its chart dominance to Mariah Carey and Wham!. This week, Lee re-enters the Hot 100 at No. 19, so that pecking order looks to persist in 2025.
Bobby Helms' 1957 staple "Jingle Bell Rock" follows at No. 20, re-entering alongside its sibling in the microgenre of "holiday songs that evoke rock and roll without actually rocking." Next up are the two most recently minted holiday standards, both of which have climbed steadily in recent years: Ariana Grande's 2014 hit "Santa Tell Me" at No. 30 and, from 2013, Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree" at No. 41. Their strength, relative to other holiday hits, appears to be growing.
Then, rounding out this week's holiday selections — remember that old, previously charting songs can only re-enter the Hot 100 if they're in the top 50 — are two gelatinous slabs of moldy fruitcake (Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" at No. 47 and Michael Bublé's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" at No. 48) and one gleaming gem (Nat "King" Cole's "The Christmas Song" at No. 50).
Bublé's strength and momentum, year over year, is especially notable and alarming: The Canadian singer has yet to hit the Hot 100's top 10 in his career, but he looks extremely well-positioned to do so this time around. (He's also got this week's highest-charting holiday album: Christmas, at No. 25.)
And, because the charts are kind of inherently a zero-sum game, there's a whiff of bad news for the Ives Hive. Burl Ives has been a staple of the top 5 — as recently as December 2024 — with his 1964 recording of "A Holly Jolly Christmas." But, at least so far, it's absent from this year's initial chart flurries.
The Ives Dive can only be blamed on one Scroogey scourge: Michael freaking Bublé, whose own take on the song debuted at No. 37 at the very beginning of this year. If Bublé becomes the new literal standard-bearer where "A Holly Jolly Christmas" is concerned, then that's bad news for 1) the estate of Burl Ives; and 2) everyone with taste. Justice for Burl!
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