This holiday season, Mariah Carey is facing backlash over her wildly popular song, “All I Want for Christmas.”
Walter Afanasieff chastised the “Queen of Christmas” for allegedly claiming exclusive ownership of the song.
The “We Belong Together” hitmaker revealed in 2017 that she began writing the song as a child on a piano. Walter, who co-wrote the Christmas song, revealed that Mariah almost certainly couldn’t have come up with it on her own.
This holiday season, Mariah Carey is facing backlash over her wildly popular song, “All I Want for Christmas.”
Walter Afanasieff chastised the “Queen of Christmas” for allegedly claiming exclusive song ownership.
The “We Belong Together” hitmaker revealed in 2017 that she began writing the song as a child on piano. Walter, who co-wrote the Christmas song, revealed that Mariah almost certainly couldn’t have come up with it on her own.
In a podcast interview for “Hot Takes & Deep Dives,” he stated:
“She doesn’t understand music.”
Walter went on to say:
“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.”
When she was younger, the music producer revealed that she used her finger to play a piano to create a song with a complex chord structure.
The 64-year-old music composer also wondered why Mariah Carey didn’t reveal it sooner rather than later, when she “began to hint at the reality.”
Walter joked that:
“it simply sort of evolved in her imagination.”
He even mentioned that the Grammy-winning singer didn’t play any instruments while writing the song and that, until recently, everyone was in agreement on who wrote it.
In the 2019 documentary “Mariah Carey Is Christmas: The Story of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,'” the mother of twins described the songwriting process.
In the documentary, she stated that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was playing in a home in New York while she was there.
Mariah could hear the melody everywhere she went, but it wasn’t until she entered a small room that she discovered a keyboard and began playing it.
She admitted that she is not a great pianist and that some of the songs she composes are “happy accidents.”
When it came time to write the song with Walter, they came up with a slew of ideas to make “All I Want for Christmas” sound and feel like a classic.
The song was written for Mariah Carey’s fourth studio album, which was released in 1994. It has become one of the most memorable Christmas songs in music history.