Mariah Carey’s holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is back at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song knocks Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” off the top of the chart after a history-making two-week run at No. 1. This marks the fifth holiday season in which Carey’s Yuletide jam reigned supreme on the chart.
Videos by American Songwriter
Carey released the song in 1994. Since then, it has become a cornerstone of Christmas music across the country. However, according to Billboard, it didn’t see real chart success until 2017. It hit the top 10 for the first time that year. Then, the next year, it reached the top five. Since 2019, the song has spent a total of 13 total weeks at No. 1. It spent three weeks at the top of the chart in 2019, two weeks in 2020, three weeks in 2021, and four weeks during last year’s holiday season.
Mariah Carey Co-Wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is You” with Walter Afanasieff
In most interviews, Carey states that she wrote her holiday hit alone. She claims to have done so on a Casio keyboard while It’s a Wonderful Life played in the background. However, she shares writing credit on the song with her former collaborator Walter Afanasieff. He also co-produced the song.
In 2019, when the song took the No. 1 spot for the first time, Afanasieff talked to Variety about the friction behind the song. They co-wrote and co-produced several songs together early in Carey’s career. However, at the time of the interview, the two hadn’t spoken to one another in more than a decade. Additionally, he said he had to deal with hateful comments and even death threats from Carey’s fans after asserting that he had a hand in creating the song.
“Mariah Carey and I have written a hundred songs together,” he told the publication. “So to deny my songwriting partnership with her on this one song doesn’t really make sense. All the songs we write are all 50/50 partnership songs,” he added.
“In fact, if you ask Mariah Carey ‘Who did you write Hero with’ or ‘Who did you write One Sweet Day with,’ she’ll go, ‘Oh, well, I wrote that with Walter Afanasieff,’” he continued. “On this one particular song, for some reason, she’s decided to wrap her arms around this in such a way like she almost does not want to admit [to having a co-writer].”
Afanasieff went on to say that he and Carey co-penned three songs for her 1994 Christmas album. They did so in a house in New York over the summer.
Featured Image by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
