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.
Afanasieff is a whiner. Sour grapes.
An acquaintance of mine is an extraordinary a capella harmony singer, by ear—he never received any formal musical training. Instead, he was raised in a generations-strong Bluegrass music tradition, and has sung in churches and regional theater for 60 years, including arranging harmony parts and directing small combos, to considerable acclaim.
Recently he got a group together to sing a simple, three-part harmony version of a classic piece of music that was originally scored for orchestra and chorus. At the last minute, one of the three singers had to drop out; and he hastily added a new tenor who also happened to be musically literate.
The new person totally took over and began lecturing the two a capella singers, the stage hands, microphone people and the director of the musical, because the other two "didn't know music." But during the performance, he sang flat and missed several of his entrances. I was sad for my very skilled friend to have been embarrassed by that egotist.
Mariah Carey has a great voice. I don't like that piece of Christmas music, but the gal can sing. Great vocal performance doesn't originate with those who score music or instrumentalize it.
Mariah is crying all the way to the bank.
I never said it didn’t take work.....my point is many people have a gift that doesn’t require formal training.....and I bet Mariah Carey falls into that category.
EXACTLY. If she sang the same songs, with the same voice, and the same backup, but looked like a young Helen Thomas, would anyone be talking about how talented she is?
About 30 years and 50 pounds ago.
“I wonder if Walter earns that much, as well.”
Probably less, because he just has the writing credit, where she gets royalties from the recordings as well.
Why would this guy want anyone to know he wrote this overplayed song?
I hate music.
Exactly.
This 2022 article says she earns 400,00 British pounds ($482,000) per year on it. Still, nice piece of change.
Walter’s extreme sour grapes are not very becoming, are they? What a grouch. In music, there have always been winners and losers. The stars make all the big money and the studio musicians, producers, sound engineers, and song writers are quietly laboring in the background, grinding things out day-to-day, and making a living.
I often groused about no-talent execs in the companies I worked at, but somehow they rose to the top and made the big bucks.
That’s the way of the world.
The dominant/V chord in C is Gmaj,or G,B, and D.
I may be missing something. But I'd never tell someone I aced harmony or theory.
Yep. Not a huge fan, but she can hit those notes. And she was a bit of a looker, for what that’s worth.
She can take his critique all the way to the bank.
According to Wiki, Mariah received vocal training from her mother, who was a classically trained opera singer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariah_Carey
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