So Mariah and I have a lot in common regarding chords. But there's one little thing that differentiates us...
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.
Y E S!
She sounds awful when she ‘sings’!!
So Mariah and I have a lot in common regarding chords. But there's one little thing that differentiates us...
I mostly can’t stand Mariah, but that sounds more like sour grapes than a fair charge. She could have written most of the song, and then he added a couple of the complex chords. She has shown musical ability if only by how she sings many of those runs.
Lol. I caught a few minutes of her Christmas special the other day. She was sort of talking/rapping/ singing (?) on stage while some homo dude was applying makeup to her face while a woman was doing something with her hair. It was really weird. I changed the channel.
I read that she earns at least $3M, every Christmas, on royalties for that ONE song.
Not sure if I have the number correct....something to that effect.
I wonder if Walter earns that much, as well.
Let’s see Walter hit the high notes, like Mariah does (or, at least used to could :)
Doesn’t matter. The general public doesn’t care about mechanics or theory. They care about perceived “talent.”
Sorta like Biden. They don’t care that he’s an empty suit taking cues from globalist billionaires. He’s a figurehead. He knows as much about finance as he does how to go boom boom in da potty.
wanker
His net worth is probably in the top 0.05%...he gets a cut every time these songs are played or streamed.
The phrase "attention whore" comes to mind.
Walter, as co-writer, gets half of the writers’ royalties.
The dude has a writing credit for the song, and is getting nice fat checks every year from it... so I’m not sure where he is coming from claiming she says she wrote it solo.
Has she taken more credit for it than she deserves? Probably... they are the ones who get the interviews, not the songwriters... so I am sure she’s exaggerated or embellished the story of the songs creation to “play to the crowd” over the years. Let’s face it, at the end of the day, she’s an entertainer, that’s what they do, entertain.
Also a pop artist not having a deep understanding of music or musical theory? Those are a dime of dozen, and have been for decades.
There was another song written well before hers of teh SAME TITLE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_I_Want_for_Christmas_Is_You_(Vince_Vance_%26_The_Valiants_song)
“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,”
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.
Good for Walter!
I suspected such.
He should sit back and enjoy his royalties...and, rest on his laurels....rather than whine.
Exactly... he has a song writing credit formally on the song, so it’s hard to say she’s taken all the credit... see post 12.
I once heard Alanis Morissette call it the “dolphin octaves” when talking about Mariah and I can’t ever unhear that.
See post 12... I don’t know where the whining is coming from... he’s got a formal songwriting credit on the song...
I have no doubt in interviews Carrey has probably embellished for the audience the story of how the song came to be.. that’s what entertainers do.. but its kind of hard to claim she’s taken all the credit when you literally have a song writing credit on the song.
“Walter Afanasieff,......American record producer and songwriter of Russian-Chinese descent.”
I think I fou6the problem
All I can say is I hope the dude has tenacious representation to keep his name stuck on that song so he can get a healthy slice of those $3M yearly residuals. After that, be glad to be a partner in creating the song.
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