Over the years, Mariah Carey has recounted a heart-warming tale of how her smash hit tune “All I Want for Christmas” came to be: She was sitting around the tree as a child, listening to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when she felt inspired to tap out a few notes on a Casio keyboard. The result was one of the most famous Christmas tunes of all time. But Walter Afanasieff, a Grammy-winning songwriter who collaborated on many of Carey’s biggest hits, called that story a “tall tale,” on a Thursday episode of the podcast Hot Takes & Deep Dives. Afanasieff said he and Carey created the song together in the 1990s and that Carey acknowledged that until about 15 years ago, when her story started to change. “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... 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.” Afanasieff has groused for a while now about Carey’s apparent snub, telling Variety in 2019 that they hadn’t spoken in more than 20 years.
