[Video] Mariah Carey Opens the Christmas Season at Midnight: First, a Punk Song From Her Secret 1995 Band
Just after midnight on November 1, singer Mariah Carey posted her annual video on social media with a one-line caption: "IT'S TIME!!!!" Since 2019, she has released such a video the moment Halloween ends, and it has become a fixed signal in American pop culture that the Christmas season has begun. The video was also posted to her official YouTube channel.
This year's opening was different. On-screen text reads "New York City, October 31, 11:58 p.m." as the camera enters a punk bar, where Carey, with red-and-pink hair, heavy eye makeup and a studded jacket, performs a punk song before stage-diving toward the crowd.
The song is "Hermit." Entertainment Weekly identified it as a track from "Someone's Ugly Daughter," the 1995 alternative-rock album she secretly made under the band name Chick. In 1995, while recording her hit album "Daydream," she also made the rock record; the released version was sung by her friend Clarissa Dane, and her own lead-vocal version has never been released. She told the story publicly in her 2020 memoir, "The Meaning of Mariah Carey."
At midnight the scene turns to snow: Carey, now in a red sequined Christmas outfit, stands atop a giant Christmas tree and launches into "All I Want for Christmas Is You," from her 1994 album "Merry Christmas." Several outlets noted that this year's post also carried a paid partnership hashtag for a body-care brand.
The annual ritual grew out of an internet joke: since 2017, fans have joked that Carey "defrosts" for the holiday season, and from 2019 she began answering with a themed video each November 1. Entering this season, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" had spent a cumulative 22 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, across multiple runs.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 玛丽亚·凯莉在2026年「It's Time」视频中的造型（视频截图，Mariah Carey官方YouTube频道）
