Mariah Carey Declares ‘It’s Time’ for Christmas 2026 With Holiday Campaign — and Another Grunge Album Tease

It’s time! Mariah Carey has declared that the holiday season is upon us with her annual PSA, this year teaming up with a major fashion house for a festive campaign while also teasing the long-awaited release of her shelved grunge album (again).

For several years, the Queen of Christmas has heralded the beginning of the holidays with a video of herself singing in her signature whistle tones, “It’s time!” She kept with that tradition this year, sharing a cinematic sequence on Sunday (Nov. 1) of the calendar changing months. When it shifts to November, she appears in a bedazzled Santa-inspired jumpsuit and beams at the camera as the iconic opening bars of her evergreen smash “All I Want for Christmas Is You” twinkle in the background.

“IT’S TIME!!!!” she wrote in the caption, while her son, Moroccan, commented, “ITS FREAKING TIME YO.”

But fans shouldn’t let the Christmastime excitement distract them from the fact that in the first half of the PSA video — which shows what Carey supposedly got up to on Halloween this year — she appears in a colorful wig and punk makeup and fishnets while performing a thrashing number in a New York City dive bar. The song? “Hermit,” aka the centerpiece of Someone’s Ugly Daughter, Carey’s legendary grunge album that she recorded more than 30 years ago while working on 1995 album Daydream, but never properly released.

Fans have been begging Carey to free Someone’s Ugly Daughter from the archives for years, with the album currently existing only under the pseudonym Chick with Clarissa Dane on vocals instead of Mimi. In her Instagram video, Carey stage dives into the crowd just as the clock hits midnight, at which point the Christmas spirit takes her far away from the grunge scene — but could the nod to “Hermit” mean that Lambs may finally wake up on Christmas morning with Someone’s Ugly Daughter under the tree?

Possibly. Just a couple of days ago, Carey chatted with fans for a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session, saying this to one person who inquired about the shelved LP: “I get asked this about once a week. my answer is…#notyet (this is a hint!)”

One day after the Christmas kickoff, the Songbird Supreme kept the holiday hype going by sharing her new partnership with Gucci. In the fashion house’s latest commercial, Carey makes a grand entrance at a snazzy hotel — the employees of which hastily decorate in the moments leading up to her arrival — and becomes the life of the party at a glamorous holiday party soundtracked by, yes, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The track has spent a collective 22 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since its release in 1994, and with 2026 shifting into X-mas mode, it might just nab even more time at the top of the chart.