“Creating a Christmas classic is about [making] something that feels timeless,” Mariah Carey told Zane Lowe in a recent Apple Music interview. She would know. Carey’s first contribution to the holiday canon, 1994’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, remains the most popular contemporary Christmas song around the world, and even earned the R&B-pop icon her own TV event, “Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special”, last year on Apple TV+. This year, she returns with a playlist of her favourite holiday tunes—complete with voice notes from Mariah herself that guide the listener through—as well as a soulful new song called “Fall in Love at Christmas” featuring Khalid and Kirk Franklin. “It gave me chills when I first heard it,” she said of the track. “It takes you to that spiritual place and becomes universal at the end. It reaches people. I just know I’m going to be singing it every year.”