Weekly Bassline #245: All I Want For Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey)

Released in 1994, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” has become a seasonal pop-gospel classic. The song is in G major, but as we’ve seen before on the previous analysis of Christmas tunes, a lot of non-diatonic chords also appear throughout the song. But let’s first take a look at the diatonic chords of G major:

Right in the Intro of the song we encounter 3 non-diatonic chords. The Cm chord in bar 4 is by now an common friend, as we’ve already met this minor subdominant chord in both “Christmas Time” by Bryan Adams and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” by Bruce Springsteen. The bars 5-8 are a harmonically elaborated and prolonged version of the “turnaround progression” (which we discussed in last weeks post).

The 28 bars long verses are like a long extended workout of the “turnaround progression”. The first 16 bars are essentially just oscillating between tonic (I) and subdominant (IV and iv), while the following 12 bars are going through different elaborated variants before culminating  in the pure I-VI-II-V “turnaround progression” at the end.

The bridge is just an extended version of the bars 18 - 24 of the verse:

All in all the whole tuned is built around the I-VI-II-V "turnaround progression". 

The list of common elements in comparison to the previous analysed christmas songs:

• frequently used secondary dominant chords
• subdominant minor chords
• turnaround progression

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