‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ co-writer questions Mariah Carey’s version of when she wrote it

Mariah Carey’s co-writer and co-producer on “All I Want For Christmas Is You” added the star’s account of the time she wrote the song.

Carey claimed in a 2017 interview that the holiday classic was “basically a song I wrote as a kid on my little Casio keyboard.”

Appearing on the Hot Takes & Deep Dives With Jess Rothschild podcast, co-writer and co-producer Walter Afanasieff disputed that version of events. “When she started revealing that she wrote that song as a child, she said to me, ‘Oh, I wrote that song as a child! But why wasn’t she saying that at 12 , 13, 15 years before that?” said..

“So it developed in her mind. She doesn’t play anything. She doesn’t play the keyboard or the piano. She doesn’t understand music, she doesn’t know chord changes or music theory or anything like that. She doesn’t know has a diminished chord between a minor seventh chord and a major seventh chord.”

She said: “To say that she wrote a very complex chord-structured song with her fingers on a Casio keyboard when she was little is kind of a tall tale.”

According to Afanasieff, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was actually conceived when he and Carey “were together in this beautiful house they rented, it was summer and there was a piano”.

“I started playing boogie-woogie rock. Mariah came in and started singing ‘I don’t want much for Christmas,'” he continued. “So, and it was like a ping-pong game. I would hit the ball to her and she would hit me back.”

Earlier this month, Carey joined her 11-year-old daughter at a concert in Toronto, where they sang “Away In A Manger” together.

“This is my girl,” Carey said as she introduced Monroe on stage. “Eleven years ago I received the best present. You know what, I don’t have a birthday, but the best present was the day of delivery, when I had my twins Roc and Roe. [Moroccan y Monroe]and once again I would like to introduce you to my daughter, Monroe.”