The man who co-wrote Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” says the pop diva’s story about the song’s origin is as bogus as flying reindeer.
Carey’s longtime collaborator Walter Afanasieff this week tried to debunk Carey’s claim that he invented the Christmas classic as a child. “I’m proud of this song that I basically wrote as a kid on my little Casio keyboard,” she told Billboard in 2017.
On the “Hot Takes & Deep Dives” podcast released Thursday, Afanasieff expressed gratitude to Carey for the 1994 song’s enduring success, but disputed its “tall story.”
She said that “there was never any alternate history … until probably 10 years ago when she started suggesting that, ‘Oh yeah, I wrote that song when I was little.’
“But why didn’t you say that 12 or 13 or 15 years ago? So it developed in his mind,” said the producer. “But she doesn’t play anything. He doesn’t play the keyboard or the piano. He doesn’t understand music, he doesn’t know about chord changes and music theory or anything like that. It does not know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord.
“So to say that she wrote a very intricate and textured song with finger chords on a Casio keyboard when she was little is kind of a tall tale,” he added.
Two-time Grammy winner Afanasieff described their songwriting process as a 50-50 “pingpong” of ideas with him at the piano during the long-ago summer session focused on adding three holiday songs to a future album.
“At that point I felt he was very cooperative,” she said.
He said he hadn’t spoken to Carey in four years, and that followed about 20 years of no contact.
An automated email from Carey’s rep said she was on vacation when HuffPost reached out to her for comment.
