Mariah Carey Taps Ariana Grande, Tiffany Haddish, Snoop Dogg for Christmas Special

Mariah Carey has enlisted Ariana Grande, Tiffany Haddish, Snoop Dogg, and more for her new holiday extravaganza, Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special, premiering December 4th on Apple TV Plus.

The special, per a release, will center around Carey helping Santa solve a last-minute “holiday cheer crisis” at the North Pole to save Christmas. The show will feature a mix of musical performances and animation, while additional guests include Jennifer Hudson, Jermaine Dupri, Billy Eichner, Misty Copeland, and Mykal-Michelle Harris, plus Carey’s twins, Moroccan and Monroe.

To accompany the special, Carey will release a new single and music video, “Oh Santa!” on December 4th. Carey co-wrote the song and it will feature additional vocals from Grande and Hudson. A companion soundtrack for the special will arrive December 4th on Apple Music, before hitting other platforms on December 11th.

Carey is also set to sit down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an interview that will air on December 7th. During the interview, Carey will discuss the songs on her special holiday playlist, as well as her new music and recent memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. Capping it all off, Carey will appear on the Apple Music Hits radio station on Christmas, December 25th, for a six-hour Holiday Hits special.


Carey has fully embraced her role as pop culture’s Queen of Christmas in recent years, thanks primarily to the perennial popularity of her smash, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (her 1994 holiday album, Merry Christmas, on which the song appears, has already begun its seasonal climb up the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums chart).

In recent years, Carey has celebrated the holidays with an annual tour, a YouTube special, two Hallmark movies, and a Universal Pictures Home Entertainment release. Last year, she appeared in an Amazon documentary special, Mariah Carey Is Christmas: The Story of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ depicting a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the hit single.