Years after the story about how long it took Mariah Carey to write All I Want for Christmas is You circulated, she has set the record straight.
It is one of the biggest Christmas songs ever made, breaking dozens of records. Naturally, Mariah became the ‘Queen of Christmas’ (when she posts her video of her breaking ice and screaming, “It’s timeeeee!” you know the festive season is near). But the idea the music star and her songwriting partner made it in such little time isn’t strictly true.
Mariah Carey’s producer says they wrote All I Want for Christmas is You in 15 minutes
Walter Afanasieff, a producer who collaborated with Mariah on a number of her albums, including 1994’s Merry Christmas, claimed the pair of them wrote and composed it in just 15 to 20 minutes.
He told CBS the song was written in “minutes. I’m gonna say, like, 15, 20 minutes.” He added: “I’m very fortunate. I mean, I pinch myself every year!”
He previously said in an interview with Billboard: “That one went very quickly. It was an easier song to write than some of the other ones. It was very formulaic, not a lot of chord changes. I tried to make it a little more unique, putting in some special chords that you really don’t hear a lot of, which made it unique and special.”
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When he was asked about the song’s longevity, he responded: “Because it didn’t fall into any genre except for a very, very tried-and-true rock ‘n’ roll genre. That no matter what year it is, it’s always that sentimental, yesteryear feeling. It’s timeless, that’s what it is.
On the celebrity being the ‘Queen of Christmas’ he said: “The literal throne-sitting monarch of the last 22 years, is this live and kickin’, cool-ass Mariah Carey that’s still performing and gets to walk around saying, ‘Yep, that’s my song.”
Mariah seemed perplexed at this revelation
Mariah Carey said in 2021 “you can’t do it in five minutes” but did concede that All I Want for You was written “quickly”. But the singer explained she made other songs faster.
“We did take some time doing the record, because if you listen to all those background vocals and all that stuff, you can’t do it in five minutes. It’s literally impossible unless you had three choirs. So, no, it wasn’t five minutes to get the whole record done. But it was quick considering I’ve taken longer on songs.”
Talking about getting the lyrics together, she explained she wrote “everything” she thought about”.
“All the things that reminded me of Christmas that made me feel festive that I wanted other people to feel.”
She also spoke about the lyric in the track which stood out to her most, even 29 years after its initial release.
Mariah added: “If someone said to me, ‘What’s the lyric that stands out?’ To me in that song it is, ‘I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow.’ Because when I first wrote that song I was very, very early on in my career and I was still thinking about childhood stuff when I did wish for snow every year.
“So, for me, ‘I won’t even wish for snow,’ that really meant a lot. That’s a huge deal, I’m not going to wish for snow? That’s bleak. I don’t want to have a non-snowy Christmas.”
Mariah originally didn’t want to record the song
Mariah Carey has previously said she didn’t want to record All I Want for Christmas is You after writing it. She explained in a 2019 interview this was because she didn’t think she was in a place at the time to make a Christmas record.
She explained: “Because it was so early in my career. I didn’t feel, from a strategic point of view, that it was time to do something like that. As much as I love Christmas, I thought that the record company was off. Obviously, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
She had also never performed the show on an awards show before until very recently. The diva sang the festive chart-topper at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards. This was before her two young twins presented Mariah with the Billboard Chart Achievement Award for All I Want for Christmas is You.
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