Why Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You ‘Became so Popular and Stayed That Way

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) __ If anything about Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is
You” annoys you, best to avoid shopping malls now. Or the radio. Maybe music
altogether, for that matter.

Her 1994 carol dominates holiday music like nothing else.

The Christmas colossus has reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart the past
four years in a row __ measuring the most popular songs each week by airplay,
sales and streaming, not just the holiday-themed __ and it’s reasonable to assume
2023 will be no different. One expert predicts it will soon exceed $100 million
in earnings. Even its ringtone has sold millions.

“That song is just embedded in history now,” says David Foster, the 16-time
Grammy-winning composer and producer. “It’s embedded in Christmas. When you
think of Christmas right now, you think of that song.”

Carey`s hit is so omnipresent that the Wall Street Journal wrote about retail
workers driven batty by how many times it comes on in their stores, including
one who retreats to the stockroom every time he hears the distinctive opening
bells.

Yet the story behind “All I Want for Christmas is You” is not all holly and
mistletoe.

The song’s co-authors, Carey and Walter Afanasieff, are in a mystifying feud.
The authors of a different song with the same title have sued seeking $20
million in damages. While Carey calls herself the Queen of Christmas, her bid to
trademark that title failed.

CAREY`S SIGNAL ENDS EACH YEAR`S HIBERNATION
Every year on Nov. 1, the song`s hibernation ends when Carey posts on social
media that “it`s time” to play it again. This year`s message depicted her being
freed from a block of ice to make the declaration.

In both music and lyrics, the song was perfectly engineered for success, says
Joe Bennett, musicologist and professor at the Berklee College of Music.

At the time of its release, most new holiday music came from artists past their
peak and looking for a new market. In 1994, though, Carey was at the top of her
game.

“All I Want for Christmas is You” works as a love and holiday song. Carey sets
it up: She doesn`t care about all the holiday trappings, she has one thing __ one
person __ on her mind. It`s kept vague whether it`s a lover or someone she yearns
for.

“It`s a wishing song and it works narratively,” Bennett says. “You can sing it
to your beloved if you are together or not together.”

She sprinkles in specific holiday references: the Christmas tree, presents,
Santa Claus, a stocking upon the fireplace, reindeer, sleigh bells, children
singing and, of course, mistletoe.

The instruments and brisk arrangement recall Phil Spector`s 1965 album, “A
Christmas Gift for You,” itself a holiday classic. To top it off, part of the
melody slyly references “White Christmas,” Bennett says.

“That was my goal, to do something timeless that didn`t feel like the `90s,”
Carey explained in a recent “Good Morning America” interview.

Billboard has produced lists of top seasonal hits since 2010, and “All I Want
for Christmas is You” has been No. 1 for 57 of the 62 weeks it has run, said
Gary Trust, chart director. The Luminate data company said the song peaked at
387 million streams in 2019, the 25th anniversary of its release.

Precise numbers are hard to come by, but Will Page, Spotify’s former chief
economist and author of the book “Pivot,” estimates the song will exceed $100
million in earnings this holiday season.

“By most objective measures,“ Bennett says, “it’s the most successful Christmas
song of all time.”

DISPUTE BETWEEN THE WRITERS

As Afanasieff has told it, much of the work on “All I Want for Christmas is You”
was done by him and Carey working in a rented house in the summer of 1994. The
team had a history, working on Carey’s albums “Emotions” and “Music Box.”

He started with a boogie-woogie piano, tossing out melodic ideas that Carey
would respond to with lyrics.

“It was like a game of ping-pong,” he said on last year`s podcast, “Hot Takes &
Deep Dives with Jess Rothschild” (Afanasieff did not return messages from The
Associated Press). “I hit the ball to her, she`d hit it back to me.”

Later, working alone, Carey completed the lyrics and Afanasieff recorded all the
instruments.

Then things became complicated. Carey was married at the time to Tommy Mottola,
head of Sony Music. They broke up in 1997 and her relationship with Afanasieff,
who kept working for Mottola, became a casualty of that fractured marriage.

Afanasieff told Rothschild that he and Carey didn`t speak for about two decades
until she called him around the time of the song`s 25th anniversary, asking for
the co-writer`s permission to use the “All I Want for Christmas is You” lyrics
in a children`s book.

That business call didn`t lead to a thaw. Afanasieff says it seems his
contributions have been written out of Carey`s telling of the song`s creation.
No co-writer was mentioned during her “Good Morning America” interview last
month.

“I was working on it by myself so I was writing on this little Casio keyboard,
writing down words and thinking about, ‘What do I think about Christmas? What do
I love? What do I want? What do I dream of?“ she says. “And that’s what started
it.”

At the time the song was written, Carey wasn`t a keyboard player and didn`t know
how to write music, Afanasieff has said. Carey’s spokeswoman did not respond to
an interview request.

Afanasieff sounds almost bewildered by the turn of events. He told Variety in
1999 that every holiday season he has to defend himself against people who don`t
believe he co-wrote the song. He`s even gotten death threats.

“Mariah has been very wonderful, positive and a force of nature,” he told
Variety`s Chris Willman. “She`s the one that made the song a hit and she`s
awesome. But she definitely does not share credit where credit is due. As a
result, it has really hurt my reputation and, as a result, has left me with a
bittersweet taste in my mouth.”

Last month, songwriters Andy Stone and Troy Powers sued Carey and Afanasieff in
federal court in California, seeking $20 million in copyright infringement and
citing their own 1989 country song, “All I Want for Christmas is You.” They had
dropped a previous effort.

Their song has a similar theme, with a narrator desiring a love interest before
Christmas comforts. The writers cite an “overwhelming likelihood” that Carey and
Afanasieff had heard their song.

The two songs have no musical similarities, Berklee`s Bennett says, and the
theme is hardly unique. He pointed out Bing Crosby`s “You`re All I Want for
Christmas,” Carla Thomas` “All I Want for Christmas is You” and Buck Owens` “All
I Want for Christmas, Dear, is You.”

Says the musicologist: “It`s nonsense.“

THE NEXT ‘ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU’?
In his podcast appearance, Afanasieff noted how Foster once told him that “All I
Want for Christmas is You” was the last song to enter the Christmas canon and
“that vault is sealed.”

Foster told AP he exaggerated a little, but not a lot. Writing a new holiday
song is brutally hard, since you`re competing with not just current hits but
hundreds of years of songs and memories. The old classics never go away. Only 10
entries on Billboard`s last Hot 100 of holiday songs last year were written
after “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

“I just stay away from them, because they scare me,” Foster says. “Lyrically,
it’s sort of all been done before __ better than I can ever do.”

A holiday album Foster and his wife, Katharine McPhee, released recently sticks
with the standards, plus Foster`s own 1989 song, “Grown-Up Christmas List.”

A handful of more contemporary songs have shown potential staying power, like
Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” from 2014, Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the
Tree” from 2013, Gwen Stefani & Blake Shelton`s “You Make it Feel Like
Christmas” from 2017 and Taylor Swift`s “Christmas Tree Farm” from 2019.

While he appreciates Foster`s compliment, Afanasieff told Rothschild that he
hoped others don`t take it to heart.

“I urge songwriters every year,” he says. “It`s time to write the next ‘All I
Want for Christmas is You.'”