Mariah Carey has had much success with her 12-time platinum holiday single “All I Want For Christmas.” MC was recently called out by the song’s co-writer Walter Afanasieff after celebrating the record’s 21 million streams on Spotify.
Afanaseiff claimed that Mariah’s contribution to the song isn’t what the star portrayed it to be. “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.”
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However, Carey’s rep denied Afanaseiff’s comments. “Mariah has never claimed to write ‘All I Want for Christmas’ by herself or as a child. She has always credited Walter, as he is cited as a writer on the song, so that would be ridiculous.” The rep added, Not ‘sure where that rumor came from, but Mariah is very respectful of writers and the craft, as she is a songwriter herself.”
Mariah made fun of the rumor with an Instagram video of herself from 1994 explaining the writing process of “All I Want for Christmas.” “I was up at the farm, upstate where we did the video,” she said in the clip. “And it was nighttime. I was just walking around, and I got the idea for the song,” she said at the time. I don’t know where it came from, sometimes things just come to me like that. That melody just came into my head, the verse melody. Then, I was walking around, and just went in. I had a little keyboard set up there and I just kind of finished the lyrics and the melody just came pretty quickly.”
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“All I Want For Christmas” is the first and only holiday song to sell over 12 million copies in the United States. Check out the full video of Mariah’s throwback video below.