Walter Afanasieff
Posted on 12/27/2022 6:50:17 AM PST by Red Badger
Mariah Carey’s co-collaborator on “All I Want For Christmas,” Walter Afanasieff, fired off about the iconic star on the “Hot Takes & Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild” podcast, claiming she lacks musical skill.
Afanasieff alleges Carey took full credit for the internationally successful song and fought back by stating he co-created the song and was largely responsible for its success. He criticized Carey by alleging she wasn’t as talented as fans may have thought. “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,” Afanasieff said during the podcast.
Afanasieff told fans the star simply didn’t possess the skill to create the music that he says she claims she was solely responsible for.
Carey refuted the allegations and came back with evidence to prove her point.
She said she wrote the song and posted an old video of herself declaring that fact during a VH1 interview from 1994. The video was posted to her Instagram story, showing fans that she explained the behind-the-scenes writing process to them at that time.
“I was up at the farm, upstate where we did the video, and it was nighttime, and I was just walking around, and I got the idea for the song,” Carey said at the time.
“I don’t know where it came from, sometimes things just come to me like that,” she said in the video. “That melody just came into my head, the verse melody. And then, I was walking around, and I just went in and I had a little keyboard set up there and I just kind of finished the lyrics and the melody just came pretty quickly,” Carey said in the video.
“She doesn’t know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord,” Afanasieff added.
“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,” he said on the podcast.
Afanasieff insists he and Carey came up with the song together while working on three songs for her Christmas album, “Merry Christmas.” This is the one thing both parties seemed to agree on.
“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,” a representative for Carey told The New York Post.
“Not sure where that rumor came from, but Mariah is very respectful of writers and the craft, as she is a songwriter herself,” Carey’s representatives told The New York Post.
That is a GREAT description.
Agree.
I've had many conversations that went like this:
Me - What do you know about music?
'Musician' - A LOT.
Me - Key of C Major, spell the Dominant 5th.
'Musician - Huh?
“I know many people that can play guitar (and other instruments) have never had even the first music lesson and can’t even read music.....but God gifted them with natural talent.....I think that’s what we have here.”
I can assure you, anyone who can play the guitar, was not able to do it because of talent. The guitar is not the piano, there has never been a single person born who could be handed a guitar and start making it sing almost immediately. You don’t get good at guitar without thousands of hours of hard work and practice.
They may have natural musical talent, but their ability to play a stringed instrument was not innate, it was countless hours of hard work and dedication.
If Mariah Carey knows nothing about music then Ben Marguiles is a frickin’ genius and Mariah Carey has some mad interpretive skills of other natures I can’t fathom. Maguiles and Carey wrote “Vision of Love,” which is an absolute NUCLEAR BOMB of a song.
Yeah, I get “All I Want For Christmas” might not be everyone’s tastes (or even mine). Keeping Christmas songs light, cheery and Christmas-shopping-y makes some of the greatest rock songwriters sound like retarded five-year-olds; consider the absolute Christmas crapsicles released by Paul McCartney!
Here’s the thing: even if Vision of Love is LARGELY Ben Marguiles’ work, Mariah Carey frickin’ owns that song! Now, we’ve all seen mere kids on TV talent shows and YouTube clips ape great singers like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, etc. But to just GET a song that you’ve never heard a superior singer sing? We’re not talking Madonna just painting-by-numbers songs written by committee, or even Lady Gaga blasting her way through such songs. We’re talking quality bluesiness that outdid even Aretha Franklin and her niece, Whitney.
Now, you can not know certain music skills; how many times have we been told of the classic rock songwriters who can’t read sheet music? Would I believe Mariah Carey knows song chords by sound rather than naming-by-root? Yeah. Might she identify a chord as a Hendrix chord instead of as a VII19? I could believe that. But this guy makes it sound like he programmed some punch card and out came Mariah Carey’s voice. And that is CERTAINLY NOT what happened with, for instance, Vision of Love.
People love the ‘Christmas’ song and its presentation; she has a natural God given talent and is sharing it with those who want to listen IMHO
Indeed, most virtuoso's share that in common.
😜👍🤦♂️.......................
Really? Not a big fan of Carey’s, but she’s sold something like 220 million singles and 70 million albums, putting her the top ten and maybe even top five women based on sales. She must be doing something right.
But, then again, Eminem, Bieber and “Ye” are in the top ten of male singers, so there’s that . . .
The vast majority of our population asks “who sings that song”.
Not “who plays that song”.
All they pay attention to is the lead vocal.
She can't even sing all the notes of a chord simultaneously, something even a beginning piano or guitar player can play < eyeroll>
I watched the Mary McCartney documentary "If the walls could sing" about the abbey road studios last night. Ye was in part of it, he seemed quite conscientious about his "music" so I at least give him credit for that.
That's probably true of many singers. That's why she paid him and gave him co-writer credit.
I LIKE that! It's the BS media clowns who ‘market’ this stuff, as ‘talent’. BTW-these are the same guys who gave us our current WH occupant ... and they're calling him a “President”.
I’d like to know if she could say he has no musical talent, from the singing side.
All I can tell you is “Vision of Love” is one of the top songs of all time.
That’s quite a list and he has collaborated with some big artists. Of course I’ve never heard of any of those songs but such is the case with recent pop music.
I don’t understand his complaint. He was credited as a collaborator. How many chords she knows is irrelevant as far as being a composer. Bob Dylan probably doesn’t know many chords either.
Nahhhh...
THIS is some sing’n:
Christmas with Mahalia Jackson - Gospel Christmas Songs - YouTube
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