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.
Lots of very well-known singers simply muscle their way to co-writer credits, at least.
I hate it more. Music kills people. It did me.
‘All I Want for Christmas’ is a knockoff of “Vince Vance & The Valiants - All I Want For Christmas Is You”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HWHd0EYJA
Yes, I’ve met him/them....................
Do any “POP musicians” actually know anything about music?
The stuff I hear is complete crap, very little composition, melody, hookiness, authenticity.
All autotuned computerized samples.
Boring as hell soulless tripe.
Yep, bad form on his part to dish like that. Songwriting can be a sausage factory whose doors are better left shut.
LOL
My friend said my voice was off and that it is changing as I get older.
I laughed, stood up and belted out a couple lines of “Dead or Alive “, “You raise me up”, “Chances Are” and finished with “Hark How the Bells” singing highs and lows
She laughed her ass off
Led Zeppelin needed a second guitarist like the Yardbirds had, but adding one would have changed the dynamics of the band.
Keith Moon almost joined Zeppelin, IIRC he worked with Page on "Beck's Bolero".
I keep hearing how bad this song is, so I just watched the YouTube video. It didn’t sound that bad to me. But I could understand a lot of guys watching it on mute.
You mean to tell me Mariah Carey isn’t smart? Who knew?
I V
I V
I IV V
repeat
Pentatonic scale solo
Repeat
Collect check
But music loves you.
Yeah, forgot about that
After he was out of office, Bill Clinton was dedicating some music grant to a school in Newark, NJ, if I remember correctly. He gave a pretty good speech, punctuated with the phrase, It might as well be you.
The second half of the program featured Mariah Carey. I happened to be in the lobby when she arrived with her handlers. It seemed to me she had an aura about her. I had to go back to work, so I didn’t hear her perform.
All I Want For Christmas is a great song for East Coast Swing.
A =lot= of modern ‘artists’ have no knowledge of music whatsoever. You can tell when you look at album credits, and it looks like it was written by a committee. A surprising number of the old guard actually know a heck of a lot more about music composition than you’d ever imagine. Granted, many were playing by ear, but there are actually more knowledgeable rockers than you’d think.
I doubt it. Good singers are a dime a dozen. Great ones, not so much. I don't know that I'd put her in that league. These days, with autotune, they can make anyone sound good. Video killed the radio star for a reason.
#87 Here is Carl Reiner singing just off the cuff.
He is better then well 99% of what passes for singing these days in the pop world.
Carl Reiner on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson - 01/04/1983
https://youtu.be/C9ckqPxZjfg?t=212
That
was
HIDEOUS!!!
Two cats fighting sound better.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.