For the past couple of years, Christmas time is essentially Mariah Carey time. The diva’s mid 90’s recording of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ has found a new lease of life becoming her 19th’s number one a few years ago, and since then – managing to climb back to the top of the charts every year around Christmas.
But all that success and glory comes with it’s share of controversies.
Walter Afanasieff – who’s credited as the co-creator of the hit song had hit out at Carey for her previous claim of having written this song when she was just a kid.
The music producer – who has not been in good terms with Carey due to their various discrepancies over time, recently launched a verbal attack on the songstress to debunk what he calls her “tall tales” of creating the song by herself.
While speaking on the podcast Hot Takes & Deep Dives, Afanasieff did not hold back as he expressed his feelings about Mariah’s claims.
Here’s what he was quoted telling in the podcast:
‘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.’
‘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 further stated, throwing shade at Carey:
‘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.’
Afanasieff’s frustration apparently comes from a 2017 interview from Billboard in which Mariah Carey had stated that she came up with the song when she was just a kid – ‘on my little Casio keyboard.’
This was not in-sync with how Afanasieff – stated how this song came into picture – which was during the mid-90’s at a mansion rented by Carey, where the two jammed together during a piano session to come up with the recording.
Nevertheless, after all these years the song has certainly proven that it has legs for years – and the checks are certainly going to both bank accounts, considering they’re both officially credited for the same.