‘She Doesn’t Understand Music’: Mariah Carey Trashed By Co-Writer Of ‘All I Want For Christmas,’ Accuses Her Of Improperly Taking All The Credit For Smash Hit
Dec. 23 2022, Published 11:30 a.m. ET
Mariah Carey’s co-writer and co-producer on her smash All I Want For Christmas has come out swinging against the pop star, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The singer’s former collaborator, Walter Afanasieff, revealed his feelings during an interview on the Hot Takes & Deep Dives podcast.
Afanasieff accused Carey of pushing a “tall tale” about the song for the past decade. He said while she claimed to have written the song as a child on her Casio keyboard— they actually put it together after working on her 1999 album Music Box.
“We were both on the same page about how we wrote All I Want For Christmas Is You, there was never any alternate story until probably 10 years ago,” he said.
“When 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 added.
Afanasieff trashed Carey telling the host, “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”
“So to claim that she wrote a very complicated chord-structured song with her finger on a Casio keyboard when she was a little girl, it's kind of a tall tale,” he added.
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He said the real story was they came up with it while working on her Christmas album, Merry Christmas. On the album, both Afanasieff and Carey are equally credited.
He said they were in a rental home writing music when he was playing music on the piano. He said he started to play what would become All I Want For Christmas when Carey came into the room and started singing lyrics she created.
“'So on and on, and it was like a game of pingpong. I'd hit the ball to her, she hits it back to me,” he said. He admitted Carey was responsible for the majority of the lyrics and melodies but he took credit for the music and the chords.
Back in 2017, Carey told Billboard magazine, “I am proud of this song that I wrote basically as a kid on my little Casio keyboard.”
A couple of years later, she told Cosmopolitan magazine, “I just sat down, decorated a little tree and put on It’s A Wonderful Life and tried to get into that mood.”
“Then I sat in this small room with a keyboard and started doing little melodies and stuff. I was going over all the things I think about at Christmas time that make me happy and how to turn it around and make it into a love song,” she added.
Carey has yet to respond to Afanasieff’s latest interview.