It’s party season again, which means it’s time for Mariah Carey to shine again. The popular singer’s perennial pop culture phenomenon “All I Want for Christmas Is You” rocks the charts whenever December rolls around. It is currently back at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart and for good reason. It’s a heartwarming holiday anthem, but sadly, those good vibes don’t extend warmly to those involved in the song’s crafting.
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” was co-written by Mariah Carey and veteran songwriter Walter Afanasieff, but what exactly co-written means depends entirely on who you’re talking to. Carey has given interviews over the years where she talks about assembling songs and composing melody. Usually the story involves her playing a keyboard, but if you ask Afanasieff, it’s a “false story.”
The producer and songwriter has appeared on the Hot Takes and Deep Dives podcasts (opens in a new tab), and was extremely dismissive of Carey’s claims that she discovered him at the piano. In fact, he said his story about her didn’t hold up because she “didn’t touch anything.” Here’s a snippet of what was essentially five minutes of her calling BS…
She plays nothing. She plays neither the keyboard nor the piano. She doesn’t understand music, she doesn’t know about chord changes or music theory or anything like that. She doesn’t know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord… To claim that she wrote a song structured in very complicated chords with her finger on a Casio keyboard when she was a child is kind of a story.
Now, in the interest of fairness, there are a few things in Mariah Carey’s favor here, too. She and Afanasieff agree that she basically wrote all the lyrics and contributed the melody, which in any case is a significant contribution to the song. She has also credited Afansieff in interviews and when she told the story to Amazon Music in 2019, she bluntly said that he wasn’t very good at the piano.
However, Afanasieff clearly feels this downplays his role in the creation of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and says the credits explain it better than he does.
It’s not like we’re Lennon and McCartney and we have some kind of written agreement that it doesn’t matter if you write it or I write it, it’s going to be us.
It’s also worth noting here that there’s more to this backstory than just disagreements about this song. Carey and Afanasieff worked together extensively in Carey’s early career, co-writing dozens of songs together. At the time, she was married to music mogul Tommy Mottola, 21 years her senior. The marriage fell apart in the late 1990s over a series of allegations and Afanasieff continued to work with Mottola, while Carey moved on to new producers. The co-writers haven’t spoken to each other in over twenty years, which is why their stories have drifted so far apart.
Once she left all the gift paper desechado and left all the brillantes presents (and the request), both Carey and Afanasieff admitted that the other game was a card to shape where the song ended, and in the spirit of Christmas, y en el espíritu de Navidad, that’s what matters. 99.9% of all musicals struggle their whole life and never make a song as heard and loved as “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. Everyone involved should be extremely proud of themselves for creating something that lasts and brings happiness to so many people, with one 51% writing and the other 49% writing.
Source: Cinemablend
