Mariah Carey Claps Back at ‘All I Want for Christmas’ Co-Writer’s ‘Ridiculous’ Claims

All she wants for Christmas is for some people to stop being “ridiculous”.

Mariah Carey is pouring leftover eggnog over her former collaborator’s claims that she’s telling an “alternative story” of how “All I Want for Christmas” came to be.

Carey’s former co-producer and co-writer Walter Afanasieff recently controversially told the “Hot Takes & Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild” podcast that stories of the singer writing the hit Christmas song on her Casio keyboard while that she was a child were nothing more than tall tales.

Now Carey, 52, is hoping to set the record straight.

“Mariah never claimed to write ‘All I Want For Christmas’ on her own or as a kid. She always credited Walter because he’s listed as the songwriter, so that would be ridiculous,” the rep said. Carey at the Post.

“I don’t know where this rumor came from, but Mariah is very respectful of writers and the craft, as she is a songwriter herself.”

The singer threw shade at her former singing partner by posting a vintage VH1 clip to her Instagram story that shows a clip of her from 1994 explaining behind the scenes of the writing of “All I Want for Christmas.”

“I was on the farm, upstate where we made the video, and it was nighttime, and I was walking, and I had the idea for the song,” he said. she said at the time.

“I don’t know where it comes from, sometimes things just come to me like that,” she continued. “This melody just came to mind, the verse melody. And then, I was walking around, and I just walked in and had a little keyboard set up there and I just finished the lyrics and the melody came pretty quickly.

Afanasieff, 64, said they were originally on the same page about the song – but around 10 years ago an ‘alternate story’ was suddenly told.

“She started alluding to the fact that, ‘Oh, I wrote that song when I was a little girl.’ But why didn’t you say that for 12, 13 or 15 years before that? So it kind of developed in his mind,” he said.

Carey actually told Billboard in 2017 that she came up with the song when she was just a kid.

“I’m proud of this song that I wrote basically when I was a kid on my little Casio keyboard,” she said at the time.

Afanasieff attacked the chart-topping diva, saying the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter was actually a musical challenge.

“She doesn’t play anything, she doesn’t play a keyboard or a piano. She doesn’t understand music, she doesn’t know chord changes and music theory or anything like that. She doesn’t know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord,” Afanasieff said.

“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 is kind of a big story,” he added on the podcast.

Afanasieff said he and Carey came up with the song together while working on three songs for his Christmas album, “Merry Christmas.”

“We were locked up in this beautiful house which [Mariah was] rental, and it was summer and there was a piano. So writing ‘All I Want for Christmas’ is that I started playing boogie-woogie, kind of rock,” he said, making the bassline sound.

The producer claimed he was playing the piano when Carey started singing “I don’t want much for Christmas.”

“So on, and it was like a game of ping-pong. I sent the ball to her, she sent it back to me,” he said.

Afanasieff said the singer was responsible for the melodies and lyrics while he handled the music and chords.

Afanasieff and Carey are also credited for the Christmas hit song, with no other writers or producers.

They worked together on several of his studio albums, including “Emotions” and “Music Box”.

Afanasieff’s comments weren’t the only controversial moment for the modern Christmas classic in 2022. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Orleans in June on behalf of the creators of the 1989 song in identical title “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, recorded by Vince Vance and the Valiants. This tune was covered in 2020 by Kelly Clarkson, who told Billboard that she had been singing the song “since she was a kid”.

The lawsuit was dropped on November 1.

Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was released in 1994 and continues to top the charts every holiday season.