Solar panel installations per year

Mariah Carey climbing the chart in December as solar panels climb roofs in July. Neither party knows the other is in the data. Yet the song's annual ascent has tracked the country's photovoltaic surge with the patience of an actuary.

All I Want for Christmas Is You was released in 1994 but only began its annual chart-rebound era in the streaming age, hitting Number One on the Hot 100 for the first time in 2019 and repeating since. Solar installations grew on a separate driver: the Investment Tax Credit, falling panel costs, and state-level mandates lifted annual US installs from a few hundred megawatts in 2010 to over thirty gigawatts by 2023. Both lines are streaming-era artefacts in different markets, with the song's resurrection neatly matching the renewables curve by accident.

Two charts saved by the 2010s. One song, one industry, both back from the dead. The decade had favourites.