Alex Crichton's 'Merry Christmas, i miss you' vs 'What If I Call': What Changed

'What If I Call' and 'Merry Christmas, i miss you' are two versions of one song by Alex Crichton. 'Merry Christmas, i miss you' came out on 5 December 2024 as a Christmas single. 'What If I Call', released on 31 July 2026, keeps the tempo, the key, the first verse and almost all of the chorus, but the hook no longer says “Merry Christmas, I miss you”. It says “I wish I didn't but I miss you” instead. The second verse is gone, and the song is 87 seconds shorter.

Set against the 2024 file, 'What If I Call' is partly a new recording: its bass and kick follow the old one fairly closely, while the middle of the sound, where the voice and guitars sit, does not.

Crichton has not said why he took the Christmas out, but the dates sit close together. In December 2024 and again in December 2025, 'Merry Christmas, i miss you' did not appear on any country's weekly Spotify top 200. On YouTube, its official audio is an upload dated 26 June 2026 and titled 'What If I Call (Merry Christmas, i miss you)', the name Spotify gives the track as well; Apple Music still says 'Merry Christmas, i miss you'. Its first weekly chart entry came in the week that began that day, the week to 2 July, at No. 193 in Indonesia, and the Philippines followed two weeks later. 'What If I Call' came out on 31 July, four weeks after the Indonesian entry.

'Merry Christmas, i miss you' meaning, and what 'What If I Call' changes

Both versions are about wanting to call someone he still misses, with the holiday as the excuse. The lyric only ever says 'you'; the visualizer casts a woman on the phone, so we say 'she'. The first verse is the same four lines in both: she walks into a party with her coat untied and slams the door on the cold behind her. He has not forgotten that moment, and now she is away at the beach until the weather turns warm. Both choruses ask the same question. What if he calls, she picks up, and he uses the holiday to make his way back to her 'ghost'? What if they are both lonely?

Where the two versions part is the line he hopes to say if they are both lonely and he gets a chance. In 2024 it is the title. In 2026 the same spot in the chorus carries a grudging line instead: he wishes he didn't miss her, and he does. The holiday stays, sung three times in each version; only the word 'Christmas' goes, from three times to none.

The 2024 song also has a second verse, from 1:37 to about 2:10, and it is the part most tied to Christmas. He will put up the lights and hope she can spot them from space. The one thing on his list is the look on her face when he said November was too early for these songs, and looking back, he admits he was wrong. The line suggests she was the one who wanted Christmas songs on early, and he objected; now he sings one. 'What If I Call' drops all four lines.

'What If I Call' opens with the chorus three seconds in and fits the rest into 2:40, against 4:07 for the original, which takes 19 seconds to reach its first line and 54 to reach the chorus.

Is Alex Crichton in Bleachers? No, but listeners pair the two songs

Bleachers is the New Jersey band Jack Antonoff formed in 2013, and Wikipedia lists its six members as Antonoff, Zem Audu, Mikey Freedom Hart, Sean Hutchinson, Michael Riddleberger and Evan Smith. Crichton is not among them. The Christmas single by Bleachers, 'Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call', came out on Dirty Hit on 13 November 2024, 22 days before Crichton's single on Interstellar Music.

Search still puts the two songs side by side. One narrator asks not to be called; the other wonders what would happen if he called, and Crichton's 2026 version takes that question as its title.

Neither song names the other, though, and the two Crichton video descriptions we read do not mention Bleachers, so we cannot say his song was written as a reply. Listeners put them together anyway. A fan mashup titled 'Merry Christmas (Please Don't Call, I Miss You)' went up on 1 January 2026 and had 5.11 million views by 7 November. Our key finder puts both songs in D major, but they do not share a pulse: Crichton's runs at 103 beats a minute and the Bleachers song at 112, so his would have to be sped up by about 9 per cent to sit on theirs.

Until 2026, the Bleachers song had made Spotify's weekly charts only in Decembers, in the United States, Britain, Australia and eight other countries. Then it entered Indonesia's weekly chart in the same week as Crichton's song, the week to 2 July, and later climbed to No. 33 there, while Crichton's peaked at No. 58. An Indonesian lyric-translation channel had posted the Bleachers song on 19 June, 13 days before that chart week ended.

Is 'What If I Call' a new recording? What the waveforms show

Cut into 79 overlapping four-second pieces, each matched to wherever it fits best in the 2024 audio, 'What If I Call' scored a median of 0.449, where a perfect waveform match would score 1, and no piece reached 0.9. That puts it between the medians of a lyric video of the 2024 song, which reuses the recording (0.994), and of two different songs, Crichton's 'Stuck On You' (0.120) and the Bleachers single (0.170).

Its first verse lines up with the old one at a steady 4.62-second offset for 36 seconds, so the two share a tempo grid. Split by pitch range, the low end below 150 hertz, where the kick and bass sit, matched at 0.67 to 0.89, closest in the choruses; the range from 150 to 1,000 hertz, where the voice and guitars sit, matched at only 0.16 to 0.37. Our same-recording check reached 0.996 and 0.92 to 0.93 on those two ranges. So the low end stays fairly close to the 2024 track while the middle does not match it. We cannot tell which parts were sung or played again; only the new hook line must have been.

Both versions measure 103.4 beats a minute and sit in D major. 'Christmas music' is still among the top five guesses of our genre classifier in three of the eight sections of 'What If I Call', down from six of the twelve in the original.

'Merry Christmas, i miss you' on the charts in Indonesia and the Philippines

Every Spotify or Shazam country chart where we found the song is in Southeast Asia. On Shazam's country charts, checked late on 7 November (UTC), it was No. 3 in Indonesia, No. 5 in the Philippines, No. 37 in Malaysia and No. 88 in Singapore. The Bleachers song was No. 12 and No. 29 in the first two; 'What If I Call' was No. 20 in Indonesia. On Spotify's daily Philippine chart, the list that SHEAN's 'ako ang bagyo' topped on 29 October, 'What If I Call' was No. 26 on 4 November; its best there is No. 23.

Crichton's YouTube channel had 22,700 subscribers late on 7 November (UTC), when the 'What If I Call' visualizer had 18.9 million views and the 2024 official audio 12.7 million. Most of his Spotify streams come from one song. Of the 174.4 million across the 19 songs kworb lists for him by 3 November, 94.3 million belong to the Christmas song alone; third on that list, 'i'll wait for you', has 2.8 million. 'What If I Call' already gets more plays a day: 784,292 against 540,289 in kworb's 3 November count.

'Merry Christmas, i miss you' is the version with the lights, the wish list and the argument about November. 'What If I Call' keeps the call and the holiday, but never says which holiday it means.