All she wants for Christmas is for certain people to stop being ‘ridiculous.’
Mariah Carey is pouring leftover eggnog throughout her former collaborator’s claims that she tells an “alternate story” of how “All I Want for Christmas” got here to be.
Carey’s former co-producer and co-writer Walter Afanasieff controversially told the “Hot Takes & Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild” podcast recently that stories of the singer writing the hit Christmas song on her Casio keyboard as a toddler were nothing greater than tall tales.
Now, Carey, 52, hopes to set the record straight.
“Mariah has never claimed to put in writing ‘All I Want for Christmas’ by herself or as a toddler. She has all the time credited Walter, as he’s cited as a author on the song, so that may be ridiculous,” Carey’s rep told The Post.
“Undecided where that rumor got here from, but Mariah may be very respectful of writers and the craft, as she is a songwriter herself.”
The songstress threw shade at her one-time song partner by posting a vintage clip from VH1 to her Instagram story that shows a clip of her from 1994 explaining the behind-the-scenes of the writing of “All I Want for Christmas.”
“I used to be up on the farm, upstate where we did the video, and it was nighttime, and I used to be just walking around, and I got the thought for the song,” she said on the time.
“I don’t know where it got here from, sometimes things just come to me like that,” she continued. “That melody just got here into my head, the verse melody. After which, I used to be walking around, and I just went in and I had slightly keyboard arrange there and I just form of finished the lyrics and the melody just got here pretty quickly.”
Afanasieff, 64, said the 2 of them were originally on the identical page concerning the song — but about 10 years ago, there was suddenly an “alternate story” being told.
“She began to hint on the incontrovertible fact that, ‘Oh, I wrote that song once I was slightly girl.’ But why weren’t you saying that for 12 or 13 or 15 years prior to that? So it just type of developed in her mind,” he said.
Carey did in actual fact tell Billboard in 2017 that she got here up with the song when she was just a child.
“I’m pleased with this song that I wrote principally as a child on my little Casio keyboard,” she said on the time.
Afanasieff attacked the chart-topping diva, claiming that the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is definitely musically challenged.
“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 significant seventh chord,” Afanasieff said.
“So to say that she wrote a really complicated chord-structured song together with her finger on a Casio keyboard when she was slightly girl, it’s form of a tall tale,” he added on the podcast.
Afanasieff said he and Carey got here up with the song together while working on three songs for her Christmas album, “Merry Christmas.”
“We were holed up on this beautiful home that [Mariah was] renting, and it was the summertime and there was a piano. So the writing of ‘All I Want for Christmas’ is, I began playing a boogie-woogie, form of a rock,” he said while making the sound of the bassline.
The producer charged that he was playing the piano when Carey starting singing, “I don’t want so much for Christmas.”
“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.
Afanasieff said the singer was accountable for the melodies and lyrics while he took charge of the music and chords.
Each Afanasieff and Carey are equally credited for the hit Christmas song, with no other writers or producers.
They worked together on quite a few her studio albums, including “Emotions” and “Music Box.”
Afanasieff’s comments weren’t the one controversial moment for the trendy Christmas classic in 2022. A lawsuit was filed in Latest Orleans federal court in June on behalf of the creators of the identically titled 1989 song “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” recorded by Vince Vance and the Valiants. That tune was covered in 2020 by Kelly Clarkson, who told Billboard she’d been singing the song “since she was a child.”
The lawsuit was dropped Nov. 1.
Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released in 1994 and continues to make its technique to the highest of the charts every holiday season.
