Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You - Guitar Cover

Merry Christmas

1994 4:02

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About All I Want For Christmas Is You

Few holiday songs get requested as reliably as this one, so having a clean guitar arrangement in your pocket is genuinely useful. The song sits in G major at a steady 120 BPM, which is comfortable enough to keep strumming patterns tight and chord changes smooth. The harmonic movement is the real workout here: the progression leans on a I, vi, IV, V backbone but pulls in a few chromatic passing chords that can trip up guitarists who are used to simpler pop changes. Getting those transitions clean at full tempo, especially moving in and out of any jazz-flavoured voicings you choose to add, takes more repetition than the jolly feel suggests. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop those trickier chord changes slowed down until your fretting hand finds them automatically. Mariah Carey wrote the song as a deliberate nod to classic Pop and Motown sounds, so chord inversions and a slightly behind-the-beat strum give it the right vintage warmth.

• The song is in G major at 120 BPM, making it a good tempo for practising smooth chord transitions with a consistent strumming groove.
• Its progression includes chromatic passing chords beyond the basic I-vi-IV-V, so slow it down with the Practice Toolbar to nail each change cleanly.
• Adding chord inversions and a behind-the-beat strum helps capture the classic Motown-influenced feel that the original arrangement evokes.