christmas songs on the hot 100

edtop40 wrote: anyone know how billboard calculates its christmas songs on the hot 100....for example, if someone else does "last christmas' say, carrie underwood, does that count as a unique play by carrie underwood or does it get counted as by wham!?....just wondering..

Versions of the same songs by different artists are
counted separately.

PopArchivist wrote: Thats why I end my year at the end of November. While I understand the Hot 100 should reflect Christmas songs, I agree with Brian W that actual charted songs should not miss the top 10 or #1 because of Billboard's policy to let Xmas hits chart for 5 weeks.

Not that anyone asked me, but to me allowing non-current-release Christmas songs to chart is BS. Makes a mess of the year-end
rankings when a 40 year old song could get enough plays in one month to "count" as one of the top hits of the year.

Hykker wrote: Not that anyone asked me, but to me allowing non-current-release Christmas songs to chart is BS. Makes a mess of the year-end rankings when a 40 year old song could get enough plays in one month to "count" as one of the top hits of the year.

I agree! According to Billboard, one of the top 100 artists of the year (in '22
or '21) was Andy Williams!

By no metrics should he have been considered one of the top 100 artists of
the year (no offense to Andy Williams, and I actually like some of his stuff).
But unless someone specifically looked at Billboard's weekly charts and saw
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" in Billboard's top 10 portion of
the Hot 100, most people would ask, "Did Andy Williams have a comeback I
missed???"

Also, this past season, besides Christmas songs, there were weeks when
Taylor Swift and other artists released albums that had 15-17 songs chart.
As a result, Jax's "Victoria's Secret" had a #35 peak on the Hot 100, right
before about 6 weeks of all the "craziness" happening. Yet, it peaked at #8
on the all-genre radio charts, about that high on Pop Radio / Mainstream
chart, #1 or #2 Hot AC, #15 AC - so I feel it got slighted for its hot 100 peak
of #35. If it weren't for the Christmas songs, and weekly debuts of album
cuts by superstar acts, I believe this would have gotten much higher. And
then having reached higher #s (like, say, top 20), it could have even led to
more radio stations playing it more (from seeing how well it was doing on
the Hot 100) and it becoming an even bigger hit.

Edited by EdisonLite

EdisonLite wrote: Speaking of Christmas songs on Billboard's Hot 100, a friend and I recently noted that there was only about 1 Top 40-charting Christmas song in the '70s (Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles) and 1 Top40-charting Christmas song in the '80s (Band-Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas). I might be forgetting a few.

Two 70s/80s Christmas songs that always spring to mind for me are Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmastime', which hit #28 on the Top 40 in 1979, and Wham! with 'Last Christmas', which hit #4 in 1984/5. It was also #2 for like 10+ weeks straight in the UK, behind 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'.

Edited by davidlg1971

From 1963 thru 1973, and from 1983 thru 1985, Billboard published a separate Christmas Singles chart and did not
chart Christmas singles on the Hot 100. Yes, the Band Aid song was considered an exception. Remember, this was an
era before the all Christmas music stations started popping up. Starting around Thanksgiving, Top 40 stations would
slowly start sprinkling in some Christmas music, gradually increasing the frequency as Christmas got closer. It's my
guess that Billboard didn't like the fact that a few songs (such as White Christmas) would come back every year for a
few weeks on the Hot 100, thus the change in policy in 1963. There were a smattering of Christmas singles to make
the Hot 100 from 1974-82, with the Eagles song being the most popular, by far.

Frankly, I'd like to see Billboard allow only brand new Christmas songs to make the Hot 100 and for the older ones to
be accounted for on the Holiday 100 chart only. After all, I think most people consider them to be "re-currents" and
no one would confuse Andy Williams, Perry Como and the like to be "hot" artists.