Mariah Carey Hits Back At “Ridiculous” Claims From ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ Co-Writer
Photo Credit: Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage
Mariah Carey her former producer and songwriter, Walter Afanasieff, are in a bitter feud over holiday hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
Mariah Carey is setting the record straight on her 1994 hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Walter Afanasieff, Carey’s former co-producer and co-writer recently appeared on podcast Hot Takes & Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild, where he shared an “alternate version” of Carey’s Christmas anthem, saying that the singer-songwriter didn’t come up with the song’s concept on her Casio keyboard as a child.
“She started to hint at the fact that, ‘Oh, I wrote that song when I was a little girl.’ But why weren’t you saying that for 12 or 13 or 15 years prior to that? So it just sort of developed in her mind,” he said.
Afanasieff also questioned Carey’s musical abilities.
“She doesn’t play anything, she doesn’t play keyboard or piano. She doesn’t understand music, she doesn’t know chord changes and music theory or anything like that. She doesn’t know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord,” Afanasieff said.
Since Afansieff’s podcast appearance, Carey, 53, has spoken out against her former collaborator.
“Mariah has never claimed to write ‘All I Want for Christmas’ by herself or as a child. She has always credited Walter, as he is cited as a writer on the song, so that would be ridiculous,” Carey’s rep told The New York Post.
“Not sure where that rumor came from, but Mariah is very respectful of writers and the craft, as she is a songwriter herself.”
The Songbird Supreme also posted a throwback clip of herself on VH1, where she explained the process behind “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
“I was up at the farm, upstate where we did the video, and it was nighttime, and I was just walking around, and I got the idea for the song,” she said at the time.
“I don’t know where it came from, sometimes things just come to me like that,” she continued. “That melody just came into my head, the verse melody. And then, I was walking around, and I just went in and I had a little keyboard set up there and I just kind of finished the lyrics and the melody just came pretty quickly.”
Despite Afanasieff’s jabs towards Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” set yet another record, boasting the most single-day streams in global Spotify chart history. According to reports, the 1994 classic was played 21,273,357 times worldwide on Christmas Eve (December 24).
.@MariahCarey‘s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” breaks the all-time record for the biggest single day streams in Spotify chart history with 21.27 million streams.
— chart data (@chartdata) December 25, 2022
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