‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ co-writer Walter Afanasieff says Mariah Carey LIED about song's origins
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: If Mariah Carey's former collaborator Walter Afanasieff is to be believed, the ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ singer didn't create the hit song on her keyboard alone. As he sits down for the ‘Hot Takes & Deep Dives’ podcast show, the co-writer and co-producer behind the 1993 blockbuster said, “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,".
Afanasieff told the host, “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 before that? So it just sort of developed in her mind.” The 64-year-old further questioned Mariah Carey’s claim, “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.”
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The record producer was asked how the track really turned up, to which Afanasieff said, “We were holed up in this beautiful home that they were renting, and it was the summertime and there was a piano,” he began. “So the writing of All I Want For Christmas is, I started playing a boogie-woogie, kind of a rock,”, before mimicking the sound of the song's bassline to make his point through, reports DailyMail. Afanasieff said that he was sitting at the piano playing when Carey chimed in and started singing 'I don't want a lot for Christmas.’ Afanasieff further explained, “So on and on, and it was like a game of ping pong. I'd hit the ball to her, she hits it back to me.”
Afanasieff admitted that Carey played a major part in the structuring of the melodies and lyrics, while he shaped the song’s music and the chords. “I've studied music, I have degrees in music. I'm an accomplished orchestrator and arranger. I teach music. I'm not a schlump. I don't play by ear,” Afanasieff reasoned. He is the winner of the 1999 Grammy Award in the ‘Record of the Year’ category for producing one of the most popular hits 'My Heart Will Go On' by Celine Dion.