Insert Foot on Mariah Carey season.

I started writing about Dolly Parton doing a rock album and how – if she’s only doing it because they put her in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – she shouldn’t, because all humans love her and she’s the last person who has to justify anything. But if she wants to do something that keeps her in the public eye, I’m all for it. As long as I can keep watching her try to play guitar with those insane fingernails, which is like watching a genius do advanced math.

But since I was thinking of glamorous women who make more money than me (all of them), I heard this week that Mariah Carey has made $72 million off “All I Want for Christmas is You” since its 1994 release. 

She made $12 million just last year. Off. One. Dumb. Christmas. Song. 

It was actually very, very smart. Even if in 2022, the song is like a blown-out tire on which we keep trying to drive. It was smart. If you’re not horribly old like me, you probably don’t understand how important billions of people around the universe believed Mariah Carey was during the ’90s.

Writing a well-constructed hook for a super-powered voice and adding sleighbells and whatnot – and of course dressing Carey up as sexy Santa whenever possible – was a can’t-miss deal back then.

Writing a new holiday song and jamming it into the annual rotation for nearly 30 years is difficult, I’ll give her that. The market is packed full of old dead singers whose heirs and former publishers love the free money every year. Holiday music is one of the few markets in which youth doesn’t rule. People want what they heard when they were children at their grandmother’s house.

And it’s not the worst song. 

OK, it wasn’t the worst song the first couple times around. It moves well, is upbeat, and we all want someone for Christmas, right? Why else would we hang Christmas socks the size of Salma Hayek from the fireplace every year?

But we hate the stupid song now because the world lost its collective brain over it back when some of us thought construction boots went with jorts. Now the middle-aged automatically start playing it nonstop before they can even finish throwing up after Thanksgiving. Neither of which is good for anyone’s stomach but, to each their own.

According to Billboard, the song charts every year (It’s currently the No. 2 single on the Billboard Hot 100, for Santa’s sake). It’s like herpes. It may go away for while, but when it comes back, it does so decisively.

That is not something I know personally, by the way. I have a hard enough time getting dates. 

Mariah Carey prints money every December. She’s made more money off that song since I started writing this column than you and I make our whole lives. 

Carey told Billboard: “It’s so exciting because it’s at Christmas, which is my favorite [duh], but it’s also like, what a validating thing to have happen [to] my first Christmas song that I ever wrote. How did I know that that was going to become a thing every year? I couldn’t have known it. And I’ve grown to love it more. … It makes me happy every year.” 

The understatement of the century from a very subtle Mariah Carey. 

For fun, know Carey is worth about $340 million, according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.

She’s the best-selling female singer of all-time when it comes to albums, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, She’s sold 72 million albums. So of course her Christmas song sells.

And I’m all for any artist who’s still alive making a sleighful of cash every year. So Merry Christmas, Mariah. Nice work making people listen to you at least a few times every year.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.