Mariah or Bublé? This Christmas hit has emitted the MOST carbon through Spotify streams!

Mariah or Bublé? This Christmas hit has emitted the MOST carbon through Spotify streams!

From Wham! to Mariah, Christmas songs are key to getting into the holiday spirit, with some people choosing to stream their festive favourites weeks before the big day arrives. With the climate crisis being more prominent on our agendas than ever before, Uswitch.com/gas-electricity were, therefore, curious to uncover the environmental cost of the world’s most popular Christmas songs. After investigating the carbon emissions of over 200 tunes based on Spotify data such as play count, duration, and the total number of streams, they can now reveal all!

The results:

Uswitch.com/gas-electricity/ can reveal that Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You has the highest carbon footprint, after emitting a total of 3,523 tonnes of carbon. With an immense 956,408,188 total streams, 146,791 trees would need to be planted to compensate for the emissions, 256% more trees than Fairytale of New York (The Pogues), which has emitted the ninth highest amount of carbon compared to all Christmas songs analysed.

In second place is Wham’s! hit – Last Christmas. With the second highest number of streams (724,239,914) of all Christmas songs analysed, the classic has emitted 2,910 tonnes of carbon to date and would need 121,233 trees to compensate for the emissions. In comparison, the 1984 hit by George Michael’s band needs 362% more trees than Elton John’s Step into Christmas (26,277 trees), which was released 11 years prior.

Third place is pop-star Ariana Grande, and her Christmas hit ‘Santa Tell Me’ - with a total of 1,702 tonnes of carbon emitted so far. With 545,696,227 streams to date, the 2014 hit needs 70,987 trees to compensate for the emissions, 73% more trees than fellow pop-star Kelly Clarkson and her hit ‘Underneath the Tree’, which has emitted 982 tonnes of carbon to date, and needs 40,918 trees to compensate.

Fourth place is Mr Christmas himself, Michael Bublé, and his cover of ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’. So far, the song has emitted a staggering 1,597 tonnes of carbon, which is 202% more than his hit ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ which also makes the list down in 21st place. In total, ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ would need 66,528 trees annually to compensate for the emissions so far, 202% more than ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ (22,014 trees).

Justin Bieber comes in sixth place

Released in 2011, Justin Bieber’s Christmas hit ‘Mistletoe’ places sixth with 1,187 tonnes of carbon emitted so far. In total, this means 49,474 trees are needed annually to make up for the emissions. In comparison, this equals 48% less trees needed than those for his current top 100 hit with Kid Laroi – STAY – which has emitted 2,311 tonnes of carbon, needing 96,315 trees to compensate.

Just behind Bieber in seventh is Band Aid’s charity song, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ which has achieved 338,777,566 streams to date. In total, the 1984 hit has released 1,152 tonnes of carbon, and would need 47,991 trees to compensate for the emissions.