Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You"

Happy holidays, one song nation. Today we're bringing back an episode about the modern Christmas classic. You've probably heard it everywhere this season. That's right. We're talking about Mariah Carey's all I want for Christmas is yours. One of the best-selling singles of all time. It's the number one selling single of all time. If you can believe it. That's right, T yellow. In this episode, we're going to unwrap the Sonic Magic that made this song an instant addition to the holiday music canon. That's right. And get ready because you're going to hear Mariah's marvelous isolated vocals in all the glory. Consider it, our gift under your podcast tree. Luxury Today's song is one of the greatest and best-selling holiday songs of all time. All time. When it was released in 1994, it went all the way to number six in the US on the Billboard Hot Adult contemporary chart. But listen, that's okay because they went all the way to number two in the UK in Japan. All right, listen, music streaming has made this song incredibly popular to the point where it finally reached number one on the Billboard chart 25 years after its release. As well as going number one in 30 other countries. Now it's certified diamond. That's right, T yellow. This holiday jam continues to top the charts during a very festive time of year. Whether you're out shopping or grabbing a coffee or attending a dinner party or just living. If you're breathing and your ears are on, there's a pretty good chance you'll hear this pop and fashion icon. Tell you that there's only one thing that she needs. It's one song and that song is a little underground did you quite have heard before? Super niche. All I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey. I'm actor writer director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I produce her DJ, songwriter and musicologist luxury. A.K.A the guy who whispers, interpolation. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. And while you're at it, please like and subscribe. All right, let's get it going. We've got a very special guest for this episode. For a song that's become a Christmas standard from one of the best-selling artists of all time, we knew what we needed in the guest and we went searching high and low. High and low. Define a Mariah Carey super fan. That's right, a certified lamb. And we found her right outside the heartbeat studio tour. Please give it up for one of the executive producers of one song, our good, good buddy Leslie Guam. Leslie, thank you for coming on the song. Thanks for coming all the show. Well, problem, I have to control room into the guest seat. Yeah, thank you. Through the wall. Okay, so before we dive into breaking down all I want for Christmas is you. We need to ask you Leslie. What does this song and Mariah Carey? What do they mean to you? Okay, so I have come from a very big Christmas family. My parents love the holidays, decorations every year, big family gatherings. Where'd you grow up? Outside Chicago. There you go. Midwestern kid. Yeah, so we always have lots of family around. This album plays every year without fail. Topped about them, not just the song, the entirety of the album. The entire album. Topped about them. Okay, already in a different class of people who love this song. Right. Because some people just think it's a single, it's a full album. Yeah, right, exactly. So there's that and then Mariah Carey. Oh, what she means to me, everything. That is my queen. Okay, so let me just ask you, what does it mean to be a Mariah Carey super fan? And by the way, what do you call yourselves? We are the lambs. Why? Which I always assume because Mariah had a little lambs. Like it sounds very close to Mary had a little lamb, but you told me that is not the case. Especially not true. What I learned, it came from an inside joke between Mariah and trailer ends. It was her background singer for it. Love trailer ends, yeah. So apparently there was an artist who, Showering me name was truly, she did not name this artist either, who calls like his employees lovingly, calls them lambs. Be a lamb and do this for me. And so. It sounds almost like a little bit of a put-down. Like putting you in your place. But like Mariah and trailer thought it was funny and it didn't sit inside joke and then she brought it to her fans and then the fans decided, you know what, we're going to become lambs. And so we are the lambly. The lambly? Lamb. But there is a real, there's a, there's a cuteness to all things Mariah. So it really fits in. It fits, right? Right. Why is Mariah in this cute? Why is there a cuteness in my mind? 20 things. Well, she likes to say that she's eternally 12. Oh, okay. I'm picking up on it. Exactly. So that's where you're getting it. Interesting. That's interesting coming from an artist point of view. Because I know that a lot of times when I'm working on a script, I always try and tap into, I always say 14 year old me. Like the one who just liked movies and wasn't like, literally trying to pick apart every single thing. Just because you can find your joy there. I wonder if that's so that she's like, I just want to find 12 year old Mariah. Yeah, exactly. And you read her memoir. She had a rough childhood. And some pretty dramatic things happened to her after that. So she said 12 was like the last age where she was really able to be a child. How did you come to be a part of the Lambly? Like what, what led to that? Sure. So I'm in my mid 30s. So Mariah's been a star for almost as long as I'm here. Pretty much. My parents had the original of her first album, Mariah Carey. So I've always loved that album. When I was a little kid, I really loved emotions. Emotions was so good. That whole album, not just the track, the new main track. You also have, and you don't remember, you have, can't let go. You have, make it happen. Oh, make it happen. By the way, make it happen. Can't let go. These are like radio songs in Atlanta. When I'm, you know, I'm still a teenager. But like, I'm hearing these songs. I'll never forget when emotions came out. We were like, oh, this is cool. Like nowadays I look back. I'm like, that song was clearly probably written. In part for like a Whitney Houston, but then there was given, you know, the Mariah Carey. No, do that. You know, you know, Mariah Carey writes all her songs. Even though it's a media. So apparently she's a songwriter. We will get to that. No, we're going to get to that. But yeah, emotions was, as a kid, I love that album. But the album that made you realize, oh, it was the artist of my life, was a butterfly album. Oh, wow. Every song on there is incredible. She was going through this post divorce from Tommy. So we really got to know who Mariah was as a person. Because she hinted at the hip-hop R&B style, like, how much she enjoyed that. But we didn't realize how fully I met. She wasn't that until that album. I mean, she was working mob deep on that album. And bone thugs. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's butterfly. Yeah. That's butterfly. 1998. Because there's an album in between the emotions, daydream. Fantasy was on daydream, on new guitars, and amazing songs. That was the more I felt like. Because by this point, I'm a freshman in college, I think. And like, that was when I realized, oh, Mariah wants to let people know that, hey, I'm part black here. Yep. Exactly. But we're really jumping ahead because we're going to get into all that. Sorry. I mean, it's all day. No shit. No shit. But listen, in order to understand the significance of this song, we got to take a step back and talk about where Mariah was in her career. To be clear, we're talking about 1994. Mariah was already very, very successful. She was 24. She had already won two Grammys, which is more than the Grammys I had won in 24. And she had released three albums. Her self-titled debut album, 1990, Emotions in 1991, and Music Box in 1993. Also, Mariah already had eight number one singles, including Vision of Love, which, man, I mean, if you could get a slow dance to Vision of Love, you were in there. Vision of Emotions, Hero, might talk about Hero in a little bit. And Mary Christmas is her fourth album, Leslie, what else is going on in Mariah's life and career? So at this point, she is married to time with Hola, head of Sony Columbia Records at that time. Is this the last album she's going to release under Tommy? No. Okay. He can look the idea of doing Christmas album, which is really interesting. Maybe we'll get into that later. I want to jump ahead. But yeah, she's this global superstar, but she's just realizing it. Again, I'm going to refer to her in a more alive here. Reddit. Reddit, I listen to it, of course. She mentions that she didn't realize how popular she was because she was questered away in upstate New York. She would come into the city to do shows and then go back up to her mansion with Tommy. So she realized she's a global superstar around the Music Box time when she gets a peep of the crowd waiting for her as she walked to the venue. This is really, really, really, really, internet. Wow. It would be very easy to convince. Oh, I'm pretty big in the tri-state area maybe. You know, like, didn't know that like, Lil Diallo was an Atlanta listening to her. She's finally realizing her power at this moment. He's just a Christmas album. And as a songwriter, she's up to the task. The other thing that's interesting about Tommy is I feel like he tried to keep her from being too black. You know, I mean, like it's folks around this time, you know, early, mid-90s, if you will. Folks have been questioning Mariah's blackness. I feel like she never downplayed it. And on this album, especially on all, you know, all I went for Christmas is you, you can hear Mariah working in some soul and gospel and it's especially in the backing vocals, which we'll get into it a little bit. Leslie, how else was Mariah trying to speak up and embrace her black heritage? Mariah's been very open about her heritage, but it's just that again. For those who don't know, do you know what her heritage is at all? Is it that like her dad was half black or something like that? No, her dad was black. Her dad was black, okay. From New York, had Venezuelan roots, but in New York. Oh, sure. Yeah, so she's always been very open about that. But she also mentioned a lot. Tommy who tried to wash it off of her. She was a young person doing adult contemporary, which sound great, but you know, she's a 20-something-year-old from New York. She's a new Jack Swingman who does comedy. She's into hip-hop, but she wasn't able to express that early in the early days. Right. Because Tommy thought that was going to suppress her ability to be accepted by the mainstream. Yeah, and it's all he knew. Yeah. He knew adult contemporary in jazz, so that's where he pushed her. Exactly. He wanted her in areas of music where he had some control in sort of like a knowledge base. Right. And she even says on her book that she would never let her wear her hair straight because it looked like it was curly hair that had been straightened. And you said with her hair being curly, it made her look more Italian. Wow. And she was like, ironically, my hair is curly because I'm black. Honestly, the gospel bit was huge. I mean, even before this album, though, like in the Dream Love of Video, she had hip-hop dancers. It's all throughout it. But she's always up and down. Tommy was like, Hey, we gotta hire these guys. That's your job. Okay. That's great impression. That's my Tommy. He used to that for the rest of the episode. We actually had dancers. Even someday she did a New Jack Swing version of that song that is incredible. Yeah. That's a version I sort of know. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And then, For Ryan, this era always says, this era always says like two versions. Like sometimes I even hear like the original version of fantasy. She is the queen of the remix. She's the queen of the remix. I need you to realize that. Yeah. But anyway, because she has those versions, she also has the dance version of songs as well. Yeah. But we'll get back to the original album. Absolutely. Yeah, so she's also the gospel cry as I mentioned. And Mariah, if you don't want to think about her, she does not play about her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She's very religious. But those gospel vocal is very clear that the input has come from. And she knows how to sing with a choir. A lot of pop stars are sing with choirs. They're not really enmeshed. It's like here's the pop star. And there's the choir. But you can tell that Mariah was doing some choir directing, spent time with these vocalists as well. Now, lastly, her mom Patricia was a vocal. It was a singer too. She was an opera singer, not a church singer, not a gospel singer, or what she boasts. She's an opera singer. So let's talk a little bit about Christmas sounds in general. Usually artists are making them later in the career. Like, you know, when their career is on the decline, or just like, even if it's not on the decline, like they're not like the hot new thing that's out there. At least that was in the 90s. Like in 1994, the folks released in Christmas albums were Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Kenny G, favorite of the show, Kenny G, and Neil Diamond. And at the time, the Christmas album industry wasn't nearly as big as it is today. So what does it mean for Mariah, Carrie, to make a Christmas album in the 90s, in her mid 20s, as her star power is only rising? Yeah, I mean, it's really incredible, right? Because she could have just phoned it in. She could have done an album full of covers, called a day. There's my obligation because Tommy wanted her to do a Christmas album and your husband and Lille Boss says you do an album, you do the album. Right. And how old is she at this time? Yeah, she's in her 20s, but also that age grams. Oh, I'm a crazy. Empowered in Amy. Right. Right. You know, she takes by herself to write three original Christmas songs because she loved the holiday. She's mentioned many times that. And she is a songwriter. Yeah, exactly. Don't clip this bird's wings. Like let her fly. Let her fly. She wrote that song, the song of the episode, as well as Miss You, most of Christmas time. And Jesus born this day. Yeah, to me, Christmas sounds are a little bit like, you know, Vegas residency. Like, first off, you kind of have to earn it. Like, we have to like have, like, let's say four albums by you before you go release in a Christmas album. Like, it's also like, but you know, a little bit Christmas albums of Vegas residency have changed. If you go to Vegas now, you can see a lot of like, the latest hip hop performers, the Drays, you know, I mean, like that. You don't have to wait until you're in your second act or your career. Right. Right. I mean, it's how Christmas albums were too, right? Christmas albums were something that you did when you had a decline. Yeah. Now everyone does them pretty early in your career too. Could be the second album. Truly. I mean, I, when I was interning in the legal department, at a record label, they had stipulations that artists had to have a Christmas album. That's why. They're a contract. Like, not even like a Christmas album, Christmas album at some point. Right. And my guess is that's when you do the Miss Mariah Carey. It's funny that you found that in the contracts, you know, because I, I'm very curious to know, like, are the splits of these songs sometimes different than just a regular album that you record for the label? But I'm sure the luxury has the answer to that, as well as sort of a makeshift history on. Makeshift. How Christmas. How dare you. I'm sorry. It's very well constructed. This is the, this is the, uh, this is the working kind of shanty town of history is over here. Okay. I didn't mean to insult you. This close to the holidays. But my friend, can you walk us through sort of like the eras of making songs about Christmas? Yeah, no, it's just interesting talking about this phenomenon of Christmas songs because it is a historical entity and over time, what, you know, in this era, we're borrowing from previous eras and it builds, it builds, it builds. So the idea of that being associated with a new artist, it's like, yeah, it makes sense for a Neil Diamond, who's an older artist who has lots of chapters in their career to kind of dig into this other history driven chapter. It's about nostalgia. It's about this annual family driven, memory driven feeling that's like a vibe, the Christmas vibe. A new artist who maybe, I mean, clearly at this point, she has established herself as an artist, but she isn't at that point of being put out to pasture as it were. She's not a legacy artist. She's not a legacy artist. So it is an interesting choice. On this show, we obviously talk a lot about song origins and musical borrowing. And a lot of times it's the sampling, it's the interpolation. There's a third type of borrowing that we allude to every now and then, where nothing directly is lifted. No melodies, no samples, but it's a very strong evocation. You know in the first few notes exactly what this is meant to be conjuring in terms of your associations with other songs and other music. So with Christmas songs, we have at least three eras of Christmas songs and they're corresponding genre tropes. And let me just quickly explain what a genre trope is. When you're playing a rock and roll song, if you're a rock and roll band, it kind of requires you, for example, to have guitars. So genre tropes can be the thing in that genre that is expected. And it can be instrumentation, it can be chord changes, it can be the manner of singing, it can be the lyrical content. It's a little bit the type of thing that you know when you hear it. But we hear all kinds of genre tropes going on in Christmas songs. So we're going to break down a little bit in this episode. What some of them are, where they come from, and how Mariah uses them in her song. So I imagine, especially when it's a style, you're being at the heart of it. Error one is that Tin Pan Alley dusting off the old, cold porter song playbook. Exactly, the great American songbook. So this is the batch of songs that come out of the sort of 20s through the 50s. It's Broadway, it's musicals, it's Tin Pan Alley. These are songs written by Gershwin and cold porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein, our most recent episode on Ariana Grande. We talk about them. These are songs that are also the basis of a lot of jazz music. So we have what's important about that is there's harmonies that are brought into bear that are unusual in rock music and in current pop music. But we're kind of used to these unusual harmonies. But when we hear them, they absolutely evoke this era, this type of music, and specifically in certain situations that I'll be naming in the moment. They really make you think Christmas. Or they really make you think Christmas songs. I think for me the main one from that first era is obviously, I think it might be the most successful Christmas song of at least the first half of the 20th Century, which is white Christmas by being brought to be. That's the one. Which by the way, my parents thought was really racist for the long time. Oh, let me tell you. Let's talk about that. They're like, wait, wait. I don't get that. I love the thing. I love that you took it that way. I'll never forget when I was a kid, the the Gluclec's clan had a had a march through Cummings, Georgia, which is just outside of it. Wow, fuzzy memories. And I remember that their floats said I'm dreaming of a white Oh, God. So, you know, not saying that being was the most was like some progressive lion. Wow. But it was interesting to see that song, a particular co-opted by people who interpreted the way that you did as a child. Yep. It's a beautiful song that has nothing to do with white nationalism to be clicked. Exactly. And it's one of the few great songs it has to do with white nationalism. Am I correct? All right. Absolutely true. So that song has some jazz chord changes. As do have yourself a merry little Christmas. Yeah. Chestnuts roasting up on an open fire, which the song is actually called the Christmas song. Yes. And then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. These are all songs from the 40s. These are just this one of the original batches of of era, as I would say, of holiday errors. It really comes into the foreground in this era of the Great American Songbook and these jazz, pop, Broadway, true kinds of songs that are being written and very popular. This is what pop music really is. And some of these songs are so depressing, can I just say? Like some of them are so slow. I'll be home for Christmas. If only in my dreams, that song brings you down. Like, what a downer of a song. I thought it was celebrating. That's true. Actually, there's another era a little earlier that I want to take us to. Even before this Great American Songbook era, the 20s through the 50s, we have in the late 1890s in St. Petersburg, the Nutcracker. So this is Chikovsky. It's a Russian ballet. And it's based on an 1816 fairy tale called the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. This is all of it for two reasons. One, it's repopularized because Disney's Fantasia uses the music in 1940. So that it's back in the mainstream. It was a popular play. Our musical, I should say, but it's resurgence annually as like a thing you take your kids to or your kids are in. It's really kind of more of a product of this era. Well, getting back to genre for a second. One of the reasons I bring this up is because one of the components of genre, which is like how a feeling is evoked of other songs that came before is the use of instrumentation. And from this 1892 Chikovsky ballet, we get an instrument that gets put into the public consciousness that was brand new at the time. And that's called the Che les Sté, or sometimes pronounced, Che les Sté. It means heavenly in French and you've heard it. Che les Sté. And it sounds like this. So that's from Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Also from the Eminence Commercial that comes out. It's Santa. He exists. It is, perhaps the most evocative sound for Christmas Eve. Sure. Is the sound of the sort of child's toy, music box, high pitched bell. It was a brand new instrument. Chikovsky heard it when he was traveling to the church. And he was like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. He was traveling to Paris. And he's like, oh my God, I'm going to use this in my next piece because no one's heard it before. It's going to bring the house down. And it did. No one had heard these sounds before. He asked his publisher to get one. But to keep it a total secret, he wrote to him, have it sent direct to St. Peter's book. No one there must know about it. I'm afraid Rimsky Korsakov might hear of it. And it's going to leak. It's going to leak. It's going to leak. Before I can, I expect the instrument will make a tremendous sensation. Music has never changed. Music. All about like, oh, yo. I got a secret. I have to write these all because if I don't write them, then Prince will steal them. Like it's just like the same thing. It's hundreds of years early. There's sensitive about they should. It's true. If you've answered something that I've wondered for so long. It's like, why does Harry Potter music remind me of Christmas? It is because of the bands of the... It is because of the bands of the... It's Won't You Be My Neighbor from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. It's a song that he vocs childhood. Aiti Vogue's Magic Aiti Vogue's Christmas. And Christmas, because I love watching the Harry Potter films with my kids at Christmas time in particular. Because I do do do do do do do do do do. There's something Christmasy about that. I don't know. But I think it's because it sounds like. It sounds like another reason. There's not a single reason. I think part of what I'm trying to build here is that there's a number of things that convey Christmas to this. And what Mariah and her co writer who will be talking about in a little bit. And what they made use of when they sat down to write a Christmas album. The first step is, what makes it Christmasy? And one of the things is its instrumentation. There's also some other things like rhythm and the jazz harmonies I mentioned. But absolutely, the song begins with that sound that we just heard. We're a variation on it. Yeah. And then we have another era that I feel like a lot of my favorite Christmas songs fall into. And this era, let's call this the third era, it tells us about it. It's got a heavy rock influence. Absolutely. And this is my favorite Christmas album too. We'll be talking about it on this episode because it sounds like it was Tommy Metola's favorite Christmas album and maybe Mariah's as well. But that's the early rock era of the late 50s, early 60s. And this is where we start getting the rock and roll Christmas tropes like Jingle Bell, rock and stuff like that. Start to come in this moment where there is a new musical form. It's rock and roll. And then in the early 60s we have the girl group version of that. And we have the Phil Spector era. So we're going to talk about Phil in a second. But first, one of the things in the early rock era that gets added, Jingle Bell, rock et cetera, is that rock and roll isn't straight, it's still swingy. It's still got that jazz, da da da da da da da da. Rock and around the Christmas tree. All of these songs are rock and arrab it. They're swing songs. They're basically jazz, da da da, Jingle Bell, rock. So that's this, and that finds its way into our song today. We get that three over four feel. We'll be talking about that when we look into the stems in a little bit. And it relates to the shuffle that we talked about a few episodes ago. The blondie shuffle. Everybody wants to rule the world. James Brown and Fred Wesley, doing it to death. Yeah. Gotta have a bump, good, dad. Oh yeah. Gotta have a bump. The 12-8 feel, the shuffle feel is also in this song. Great escape by Gwen Stefani. These are all the shuffle. So let's talk about the Phil Spector of it all. Because as we were talking, I was realizing, it's already hit me. Like maybe Tommy Matola is a Phil Spector fan. Because Phil Spector and Ronnie Spector had a very similar kind of dynamic, which was a very power-based, you know, the producer and the songwriter. And frankly, you know, not a very healthy one in terms of the relationship dynamic. So on November 22nd, 1963, it's the same day JFK has assassinated one of the greatest Christmas records of all time. Certainly my favorite. A Christmas gift for you from Phil Spector is released. It's got darling love, the runnets, the crystals. It is the famous wall of sound. It's some original and some of the classics reinterpreted. And Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said it's his favorite album of all time. And apparently he wanted to play piano on one of the songs. So this is the crystal's version of Santa Claus is coming to town. Again, maybe my favorite Christmas song and recording of all time. So already, if you've been paying attention on this episode, you can make a checklist of the genre tropes right there, right? How did that album perform, like chart wise? And I'm asking because it came out on a day of national tragedy. Yeah. Much like Mariah Carey's glitter. I think you're right. I think it had a second life a little bit later. I think much like glitter. Yeah. And grows in popularity over the decades. It's now generally considered to be in the canon. But you're right, at the time it wasn't as huge. I'm going to make a case that there's actually a fourth era of Christmas songs. Not showing my age bias here, but I think that the 80s gave us an incredible amount of Christmas songs by people who were absolutely not in their Vegas residency era. So you had Christmas and Hollis by Rendy MC, which is one of my personal favorites. Maybe the bad. We got to listen to that right now. Let's hear it. There is your jingle bells and other genre trope. But I love how they introduce a new genre trope with a cut. That's what I'm saying. I would argue that this is part of the five other other other Christmas songs from the 80s that I think are absolute. Mainstays are Christmas Rappen by The Waitresses. I feel like that's one of my favorite last Christmas, which I know that divisive. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I'm one of the people who love it. It's wham. I feel like the 80s was like, hey, you don't have to be entering that Vegas residency part of life to come out with a solid Christmas song. And there are many, many more that we're not even talking about. Yeah, like this Christmas. This Christmas, hold on. It was a classic. Lift every voice and sing as the black national anthem. I would argue that this Christmas is the black national Christmas anthem. I'm going to have to agree with that. Shake a hand, shake a hand. And so there are a lot of new wave hip hop. Christmas songs by younger artists. And I believe that that fourth era might help open the door for a Mariah for Alcass and TLC who we talked about a couple episodes ago. Their Christmas album produced both Slayride and the first Alcass single, Players Ball. Like there is a. Where's the man let us know with the night. Let us know. So there's this one. I can't play as well. You were supposed to be a Christmas song. Oh, that's why it starts off. That's why you got to get in the middle of the lot. Right. Not Christmas. I was like, what? I got the jingle bells in there too. And it's got the jingle bells in there. John Rudd. Troops. John Rudd. Troops to hit to hear organized noise who produced both of those songs. Slayride by TLC and Alcass is Player Ball to hear them talk about it. They had like an afternoon to pull both of these songs together and both of them are like solid, solid songs. So all of these errors, what they have in common as we get into the Mariah version of a Christmas classic is she's pulling from all of these errors in different ways. A lot of it is as they're writing the song, I'm sure very subconscious. Some of it is conscious as we'll discuss. And what all does in Toto is it creates this layers of nostalgia and evocation. It's about memories we've got borrowed from another era with the Tinpan Alley and the Jazz and the Jazz Swing and the Rock. And by the way, it is worth pointing out that in the Phil Spectra and that third era, he was using a lot of those things too. They were already nostalgic. So we've got layers and layers of nostalgia. So all of these things are put into play like masterfully for this song. And of course, Mariah's voice skyrocketing the entire package into the stratosphere for 30 years of massive streams and listening and appreciation. So the package of evocation is almost perfectly created. So it's not just the video. It's also her live shows, right? Yeah. Like if you go to one of her live Christmas shows, she is always wearing a cute little nutcracker outfit and they are candy canes everywhere. All her dances are decked out in Christmas. Are they doing the bus b-barkly dance routines in the video? Yep. That's a book in a 30s version. A lot of 30s jazz stuff is in the mix of this stuff. Every Christmas image you can think of is in Mariah's Christmas. Because she couldn't just do it coming out wearing a black jeans and a t-shirt. I think it would work. I think it's Jesus born on this day maybe. She comes out in this white dress and she looks like the angel on top of the tree. It's so pretty. So look at that literally every. I just got chills. Right. You know, I have to wear my right. It's time. It's time. Yeah. It's always time over here. Let's get into how Mariah made this song. First things first, we must say that Mariah is, let's all say together a song writer. Song writer. That's right. Here's a clip of Furby's dating that fact. Many times in her career. I thought of myself as a singer or a songwriter. As a songwriter. As a songwriter. As a songwriter and a singer, which is, you know, I've co-written all this songs on my debut album. I do a regular studio album and I'm writing and producing every song. I mean, I think that's the only fear that she did that because a lot of people will think that she's just being handed songs. Yeah. I mean, part of that is sexism. Let's just leave real about that. No. Another part of it is, I feel like in this point in her career, honestly, for most of her career, she was compared to Whitney Houston. Right. And it was Brian and Whitney for some reason. There's only one for some reason. Well, how did Whitney take all that? You know, Whitney was from Jersey and she's newer. You know, so she wasn't really a fan of that. But I don't think people in life being pitted against you. Yeah. Like, because again, there's no need. We can have more than one. Right. There's more than one. Yeah. Of course. But Whitney was very open about she did not write her songs. People wrote those songs for her. Right. And you can't sing those songs. It's written for her, but voice. I think to a certain extent, everybody's saying, oh, that pop artist, there's no way that they're writing those songs. So I think that there was a little bit of that. I think it speaks to what makes Mariah special that she did have such a big hand to play in the writing of her songs. Yeah. I mean, all of the number ones except for Al Vee there, she wrote. That's crazy. I mean, her whole album is written by Mariah. She works with other people, but she first hand writes all of these songs. That's amazing. And yeah, I mean, she's in the song right, it's Hall of Fame. Did not get there. I know I wrote her own songs. Yeah. So like I said, that clip, I love that clip. Yeah. It makes it very clear. Yes, she has an incredible voice. And she's an amazing performer, but she also is a songwriter. We're going to get to that theme a lot in this episode too, because what happens behind the scenes, we talk about in this show so often, the mystery what happens behind the scenes and the who did what and how much is it worth, et cetera, it's, it is, you're trying to math an unmathable thing. So what we get to, when we get to, when we get to, when the money comes in, when the money comes in, you're going to math. So this is the con, the conundrum, the core conundrum of all things creative, but especially songwriting is like, how do you do that? And then on the other side of it, it's the perception stuff like we're talking about. The sense that like, there's some people that feel like some singers understandably feel like they're under credited for the work that they've actually done. There is a back and forth that ends up happening on the song through the years to this day, where the credit is, you know, there are some questions about who feels unfairly treated and why did it come to pass. That linger, unfortunately, and it's unfortunate because two people came together, we're about to talk about one of them to make this incredible hit song and it's a shame that soon thereafter they stopped working together for reasons of credit. Well, I'm so glad that we have you here because not only are you guys who really breaks down like who gets what, but you're also a songwriter yourself and so we'll have that perspective too. To be clear, Mariah co-wrote the Al-American Christmas and the song, all I went for Christmas is you, with Walter Afanasi, her longtime collaborator, Leslie, can you tell us something about what inspired Mariah to make this song? Sure. I think I mentioned before that her family life at home was, you know, pretty unstable. And so, but she always mentioned, Christmas with time that her mom would really try to be homemaker and really try and have like a nice celebration. She tried and have the like, a pot of like, you know, popery, cotton water, you know, yeah, make something like that. Something like that. Fruit cake. She unfortunately, Mariah said that it would typically get ruined because fights would happen, but she really, you know, still appreciates the time of the year. So she created the song because it's, it basically invokes the feelings that she wanted to feel as a child during the holidays. I love that. And she wrote it at 22 years old. She actually wasn't that far removed from being a child herself. Right. I love to know that personal reason is behind her coming up with her part. And Luxury, what can you tell us about Mariah and Walter's working relationship? All right. Well, let's talk about Walter Aphanasia. He is the 5050 co-writer of this song, um, according to the official records. And according to all, all interviews, there's no disputing there, but there are disputes about other things. We'll get into that in a second. First, just a little bit of a backstory about who our unsung friend is today. Walter Aphanasia, if you don't know, the man is 13 number one songs, including this one, which would be the 14th. I don't know if you count all the times it goes to number one. Does that mean he has like 17 number ones? Because it's hit number one. Like four or five times. That's kind of one. That's kind of one. So I guess he's got 14 number ones. Because he had some smash number ones too that you're waiting them. Yeah. Oh, I see. I can't see. Because my heart will go on. It's true. This is not a weighted system. It's just you get it or you don't. It's number one or it's number two or lower. This man has done that 13 times. He has two Grammys, including producer of the year, non-classical and record of the year for my heart. We'll go on with Celine from Titanic. And he's nominated for the upcoming songwriter's Hall of Fame. So maybe he'll get in 2025. He certainly seems to deserve it. He starts life as a jazzer. He's a musician. He's a keyboard specialist. And he's playing with jazz fusion violinist Zhang Lu Ponte in the late 70s, early 80s. He forms a band with future collaborator, Narada Michael Walden, called The Warriors. And Narada Michael Walden is another huge monster producer. And he was a drummer in the Mahavish new orchestra. These guys are monster musicians, like musicality wise, like in terms of what there's skills on instruments. By the way, Randy Jackson is on bass in that band. So it's a super group. Oh, wait, I'm like American Idol. Yeah, that's that Randy Jackson. Okay, he sticks with Mariah for a while. Yeah, this crew sticks together through some of this. But he's just a third through emancipation to me. Okay, so he made, okay, we're going to talk about the split that happens in the late 90s. The Tommy Mariah Split has a corresponding musician split. So it sounds like some people went with Tommy and some people didn't and that had some consequences. So he's a session player. He plays on Aretha Franklin's Freeway of Love in 1984. He's since Auntina Marie's lover girl. So he's getting all these hits and then he's on Whitney Houston's second self titled album. I had to double check this. Her debut is Whitney Houston, but her second album is Whitney. Whitney, yeah. Wow, creative. Yeah, I know. I know the difference. It's a big one. Have a debut. So he's on, I want to dance with somebody. He's playing keyboards on some emotional. He's really in there on a lot of these great 80s records. All right. So she becomes a Mariah Carey collaborator in around 1989 when Nardo Michael Walden introduces him and they work on Vision of Love together. So Tommy Mutola takes notice of his work and says, who's this guy doing all the tracks, all the music. And he's told, that's Nardo's guy Walter. He does all the programming, does the music. And Tommy says, oh, I want to meet this guy. And so they start working together. Love takes time, which is Mariah's second number one. It's the two of them. And he's the co-writer and producer on her second, third and fourth LP's. She co-wrote hero. She co-wrote one sweet day. They are thick and thin. They write apparently hundreds of songs together in this period. So they work together until they stop working together, which seems to coincide by all the interviews I read with the marriage ending. So it sounds as though Mariah and Tommy's marriage ending led to people having to take sides. So he went with Tommy. He went with Tommy. Sounds like he went with Tommy. And we're going to get into that in more detail a little bit later on this episode. All right. Well, after the break, we'll dive into how all I want for Christmas is you was made. And give Brady to hear those isolated and marvelous Mariah Carey vocal stems with our guests, Leslie Guam. We'll be right back. Lecture, I got to say I am under the gun, man. Under the gun. And listen, we have to go out of town to visit family. We actually have to come back in time to host some family for the holiday season. And then we're going out of town again for New Year's Eve. It's a lot. That's too much. It's too much. Just don't do it. Just don't do any of it. Oh my gosh. Just hide in the closet. I want to. I want to. But I'll tell you what I can hide from the amount of money that we're going to be putting out if we don't get our stuff together. We got to understand it. It's easy to lose track of how much money you're spending. You know, it's so hard to manage every day. It's a holiday season. So many details. Oh, so many details. Luckily, if you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. Rated Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. And right now, just for our listeners, Monarch is offering 50% off your first year. Man, it is so easy to lose track of all the money you're spending on travel and gifts and just and bills and everything unless you're monitoring and tracking it in real time. And by the way, like, let's not even talk about those end of your expenses like insurance and stuff for the car and your house, like all that kind of stuff usually comes to, you know, it comes around at the end of the day. It's literally disgusting. I'm literally disgusted by all the money that I'm having to spend right now and keep track of. You're right. It's actually disgusting and right now. I'm checking my holiday spending category just to make sure I don't start the new year with a debt hangover. Well said. Monarch is my essential year end financial reset tool. You can link everything, investments for a one case, property value, to get your true network and stay on top of end of the year priorities, like maxing out your contributions to your 401k or Roth IRA. Don't forget about that. I know. I'm an online expert too. I'd expect this. Well, but now I'm easily keeping track of my finances and my year in financial to-do list with Monarch. And that means that I can relax and actually enjoy my agnod for once. Monarch is built for people with busy lives. If you put off organizing your finances, Monarchs for you. Monarch does the heavy lifting. Link all of your accounts in minutes and get clear data visuals, smart categorization of your spending, and real control over your money. We promise you'll never need to touch a spreadsheet again. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. That's right. Use code 1song at monarch.com. And your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code 1song. Welcome back to 1song luxury, my man. Walk us through how all I went for Christmas is you got made. So here's how the song gets made according to Walter talking to Billboard in 2014. He says we started to write what Mariah wanted to do and what Tommy wanted to do, which was a Phil Spector old rock and roll 60 sounding Christmas song. I was sitting at the piano. I started playing the sort of boogie wogie. Mariah picked up on what I was playing with my left hand, which was the melody from the bass line. She goes, oh, that's cute. And she starts singing that melody, which became the opening line. I don't want a lot for Christmas. And then I go to the next chord. And this is kind of interesting because it sort of speaks to the unusual chords in the song. Walter is saying, I usually like to change things up a bit and I don't like it for everyone else to do it. So I went to the minor chord and I repeated that. And then Mariah says, yeah, that's kind of cool. And we get a couple cool chords in between. Yeah, she says, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, this is all his testimony from the Billboard interview in 2014. This is Walter Claims for you Hamilton fans out there. Exactly. We get a couple cool chords in between and the chords for the title, all I want for Christmas is you. And then I got the music pretty much done. Mariah would write the lyrics when I flew back to California. She would call and ask for a few back. Basically, the two of them wrote the song together at the piano and then they went their separate ways for him to complete the production and for her to complete the lyrics. And then she came to record the vocals. Now this entire song, all the music, is coming from Walter and his computer. So Walter programmed the entire song, the intention being, of course, that it was just a demo to be reproduced by actual musicians who are on most of the other songs on this record. But there was something about the demo. And as we get into it, you'll hear how demo it is. All of these sounds, and this is the early 90s, my dude. So the computer music is still relatively new in terms of the entirety of a pop song being written in the box with all of these instruments. They sound fine. They sound passable, but they were never intended to be the final version. What happened was though, they tried to get some of the greatest in the business. They got great fill in gangs. They got, or Mariah Chema and drums. Fill in gangs we talked about on the Michael Jackson. So these all over the thrill are one of the greatest keyboard players of our era. And they played the song. They recorded it and it just didn't sound right. Tommy said it sounded too country. Too country. Yep. They lost. Tommy has his pocket. He was like, it's gotta be there. Yeah. It can't be there. It can't be there. It can't be for the ghetto. It's gotta be right in the lane. I know you're trying to do a parody, but he might actually sound like that. I feel like he does that. I work with Dr. Buzzard in this Savannah band. Listen. Part of it was the sound in part of it is just the replicability of some of these parts when we get into the piano parts. Like that's crazy how fast, how many notes in such a small amount of time there is. Because of the tempo, it's 150 BPM. So they just went back to the demo. And what's on the radio to this day, 30 years later, being a huge number one hit year after year, is essentially, it was never meant to be on the radio. It is a demo. That reminds me of a lot of, like, for real songs that he's on. A lot of times he was singing the hook, laying it for somebody else and they're like, wait a second. It's good. Yeah. And this, you know, for all is on every single, for two to six to like, two thousand to one. Right. Right. Yeah. He talks about on the deaf punksong on Get Lucky. The final version until he apparently sat him down in a luxury and a vault to listen to. He's like, oh, wait, that's me. He kept me. So don't overthink it, everybody. Don't overthink it. All right. So let's start with the drums. So let's start where the drum fills come in. And I have in my notes, so dinky and capital letters. These are very dinky fills. I don't think Walter would argue with me. And here they are. So that snare is so polite. It sounds like me doing this right here. I don't know. The dinky fills is like my favorite New York punk band. Dinky fills. Dinky fills live at CBGB. It's totally only on cassette. And then we get into the main beat, which sounds a little bit like this. He's got some triplet tambourines layered on top. They sound like this. I'll isolate that so you can hear it. Walter is killing them drums. So those are 1994 programs, tambourine triplets. That's tambourine. We're in 12 eight times. It sounds like sticks on a high. I mean, everything sounds a little smaller and less final than it ought to, but it's supposed to be this. It's dada dada dada dada. It's what you do with a wrist dada dada dada. And it sounds like this in the mix. Dada dada. Here's your 12 eight. Dada dada dada. One, two, three, four, five, six. Triple it, triple it. There's also like a timpani there. Let's listen to that timpani. It's important. It's like the 808 of the orchestra. So you get a little pitch there. That sounds like the beginning of 12 step. Bum, dum, dum. Ladies and gentlemen. Hey, hey, hey. Ladies and gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Canga, which I'll play separate, and then you'll have everything together. Here's the canga. So it's the exact same sound every time, because it's just going from one sound. I think back then, I don't think he had any sort of velocity or any way to like have it be a little lighter a little bit harder. Can you play it again? Yeah, sure. Do you mean it's going to realize where in the beat that is? Well, here's your triple it. Yeah. And I'll bring the beat back. That's pretty much what's happening in the percussion section of this song. And like you said, it was built in the box, essentially by one dude. So it makes sense that all these things would be, as we were saying, almost like placeholders potentially. Yeah. Their placeholders, their intention is to build something more I can sing on top of. That is their only goal is to have the song be something that inspires her, which you know is what part goes where, when to sing, you know, where are we going into the bridge, whatever is it the chorus. But yeah, that is in the final mix as well as this demo version. There's also, we're going to get now into some of our kind of classic Christmasy genre tropey sounds, starting with the sleigh bells. That's in Christmas in Hollis. That's in. No, no, no, reinvention there. It's in players ball by Alquist. And I'll add the beats to that. So there's like your full percussion. There you go. So no song goes diamond off of just what we've heard so far. Yeah. Lots of finger drums. That's the key. As a drummer seems kind of basic, but let's get into some of the instruments now. I mean, you don't got to be a drummer to pick that space. But let's hear some of the instruments. Let's go back to, I believe it was called the seileste. The che lesste. I did hear somebody from the St. Louis choir on YouTube pronounce it with the seileste. Maybe there's some dispute in the music. I just like the phrase seileste. So much. So seileste sounds right up my alley. And if I say it be seileste, which is where it comes from, it means heavenly. And it starts the song and it sounds like this. Which by the way, when I hear that, the rhythmic nature of those notes makes me think of Mr. Sandman by the chord S. Totally. Yeah. But I definitely hear the dance of the sugar plum fairies when I hear this. Absolutely. It evokes 1892. It evokes. And then as we mentioned before, and then that same idea makes its way into all those Phil Specter songs in the 60s. So we are many layers deep into like that. It sounds like snow's falling. Evocation. The house is quiet because the kids have not awakened. It's all right there at the very top of the song. Evoking hundreds of years of Christmassy songs. Can we talk about the bass? I feel like the bass is always so much fun when we talk about music. What do we have as far as the bass stems? We have a very, very basic bass line, which I'm pretty, almost I'm calling a song basic. I understand it's a demo, but like relax. I'm trying to get it. We're building it. By the way, that's a last day was very, very distinct. So we've moved on from that. This sounds like it might have been performed one finger at a time, but let's listen together and see what we think. This is the bass part. Really? Yeah. Yeah. You want to go back on your thoughts? No, I hear it. Are you impressed by this bass line? I'm just listening. That's all. I think that's an early kind of DX7 post-sign felt like synth bass where it's programmed from a real bass, but it's like the sounds the same every note because a real bass player would have some variety to it. I'm pretty sure he's not playing bass. I think that just don't, don't, don't, don't. Let's give that to you with some drums this for context. Yeah, that's definitely a program. That's the same note, you know, instance of that notes being sampled in keyboard form and just don't, don't, don't, don't, so it's the same every single time. We heard that in the drums too. When we heard the notes, the drum fill and it just sound, it's like on the Tears for a fierce episode where we could like really identify that it was a program snare because the sound was the same. There's no variety to it, like a real drummer. It'd be a little bit different. Yeah, one time we did it. To a little harder. A little harder. Right, a little different. The room changes a little bit. The air in the room. None of that's happening here. It's all in the box. It's all programmed, but it still hits. Well, this is where Walter Erts is, Erts is Stripes and I do believe from the telling of how the song got written. It does start with him playing piano. The performance here is obviously some combination of him playing it and then tweaking it later by taking the notes in the MIDI role and either copying and pasting them or tightening them up to make them perfect. But this is very hard to play, especially throughout the duration of this song. This piano, which is non-stop. Here we go. Off to the races with Walter on piano. Like that's this. The first of all, that's two parts I don't think you can play. Maybe he can. I don't know how you do that. The bass notes. I mean, maybe he's doing that all in one take. That's crazy. Four minutes of this. Well, his warrant routine has to be like nuts. That's so complex. It's simple but just it's this. By the way, what I'm doing is my right hand is shaking, waving, the thumb and the pink ear going back and forth. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do in the piano. In the high part, here I'll play it again. It's like I'm going, come see, come saw. A little feather here and there. Maybe. I'm doing the ma- past. I'm doing maybe hands. That's what it is. I'm doing maybe hands. Listen. Well, the right hand is doing that. The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. It's just over your going to do. Doubling that bass line. It's on that scale to my under-trained public schools who had very little money for the arts, ears. I've long noticed that if you have I've always called it a broken scale. I think you in the past maybe refer to as an unusual scale. But to me as a broken scale, it's like if you were to play a perfect scale, it would almost be out of place in a song. And when I listen to some of my favorite songs, I hear this escalation and it sounds like it's almost a scale but they're like cool, unusual, weird parts that don't do what you're supposed to do in that scale. That's great. For my whole life, I've called it a broken scale. There may be an actual term for it, please school. Well, no, no, no. I think what's interesting is I understand what you mean and the language for it, I think one of the things that makes the song unusual and is sort of foreshadowing for our songwriting dispute back and forth, the beef that has since ensued, is you are picking up on a thing in this song that is unusual, which is the chord changes. The chord changes map to the melodic choices. They are related. So what you're hearing is like, oh, I didn't expect us to go there. I did not expect us to go to that chord and for that note to be what we're hearing. So I'm going to talk about that absolutely in a second. Because it's what you're hearing, I expected note. Like regardless of John, like you believe this is a song and then note that's not expected to come to you like, oh, yeah, that's the exact, that's a plot twist. And that's when you're like, I'm on board with this. It's unexpected that makes the song special. And what's interesting is that baked into the unexpected, there's actually a layer of expectedness. In other words, it's yet another genre trope. That chord change, one or two of the chord changes in the song, which are unusual are actually very common. Two songs, not simply of the genre, but also the era. Let's talk a little bit about the minor, plagal cadence. What we're doing before we go to the one is we're doing this thing where the major four goes to the minor four. And it's unexpected. There's a note that we're sort of borrowing in there. And that's kind of the surprise that you're referring to, one of them at least. And I'll give you some examples just to make it clear what I'm talking about. Because we have heard this in many, many songs. One of them, and very famously it shows up in the catalog a lot of this band. This is in my life by The Beatles. Six. And here we go. Major, minor. And back to the one. So that loop back to the one, what happened right before it is we were on the four. It's the major four, which is what you would expect in that key. But then we suddenly drop one note, the third half step. That's all that happens. And it changes the entire feel of that moment. It sounds like it's used to evokes some kind of emotion. The evokes, I mean, that's the, to me, the evokes the kind of melancholy. And it's us thinking too. And it's in the context of in my life of the lyrical contents. That's part of what Walter did in this song. He did chords that you weren't expecting, that kind of temporarily delayed that need to get back to that one, which it ultimately does. And part of what we're talking about now with broken scales and such is this idea of like, I thought it was going to go here, but we're not there yet. Oh, it's building tension. It's going to get there eventually just haven't gone there yet. I love that. It creates sense of comfort when you get back home. Yes. Listen, we find this in dozens of examples. It's in David Bowie's space Odyssey. It's in life on Mars. It's also in about six other Beatles songs. You're talking specifically about the minor playgle. We're talking about this major four to minor four minor playgle cadence. It shows up in a lot of songs, especially of that era. When it's in the 60s, though, you're kind of thinking back to an earlier era. And that shows up in the Mariah song that we're talking about today right here. This is the one. One, one, one. Now we're going to the major four. But now it becomes the minor four. Now the bass note moved up, but that is still the major to the minor that we heard in the other songs that we've been talking about. So that shows up there. That's a lot. It gives you a sense of like, oh, that was unexpected, but it's, but pleasurable. And Mel and Colley and reminds me of the 60s and the Beatles and all these associations. I hear some tubular bells in there. We talk about the bells. Yes, we can. Let's talk about the tubular bells. So I mean, that's Christmassy right there, just the use of these bells. Here, let me play it for you in the mix. I'll bring the piano and see you know where we are. And it's just reinforcing what our tonic is, what our root chord is. So it's really showing up in the chorus more than in the verse. And I'm going to go back and say that we were, we were throwing our little subtle shade at those drums, but that little Congo hit that. Doot doot doot. You're feeling like that does a lot, that does a lot for the song man. Feeling like it does a lot for the song, but sometimes you can't overthink it. You got to just lay it down with Groovy, baby. Speaking of which, I did label this one. These are the sax pads, but I, I added silly because these, these are silly sax pads. This is not a saxophone. It's not a dinky fill. It's a silly sax. It's not a dinky fill of the silly sax. Let's go. Let's hear it. I want to hear this. Is it called sax? Well, that's, that's intended to be a sax. It's a patch on a keyboard. I don't think it's supposed to be a saxophone. I think it's supposed, well, even if it is, may it be, is it a successful accordion? Does it have to be a silly sax? What is this to you? Not a saxophone. Like really not a saxophone. It sounds like early digital instrumentation. It was? You might be absolutely right. It was in 1993, 1994. Listen, no shade on, look what's for me for that. Absolutely for that. No shade. When I say no shade, I mean a minimum of shade, but not none. Well, here's that same, it's called a marcato, which is the accenting, dada, dada. Here's that same thing on the strings, which is our last piece of the musical instrumentals stems before we get to the good stuff on top. So there's a sort of lower cello-based version of that high string. So I'll play all the strings together. And then here, finally, all of the instruments together doing that marcato, marcatol. And we're off to the races with the bumpa, dumpa, dumpa. So we have all these wonderful parts, and we have like these really cool cores, but we can't do a Mariah Carey song without giving you the listeners a taste of those fantastic Mariah vocals. I'm willing to start anywhere. I mean, like, you know, maybe we can hear the very beginning of this song because I feel like she comes in a champ on this song. That's right. And going back to our kind of list, you know, our checklist of Christmassy Things to Do in the Christmas song, we have this slower intro. Like pretty much half the songs on that full-spec to record have it. And actually going back further, you know, that's a trope of like the Tin Pan Alley era, all those great American song book stories. Yeah. Do Wellington all of this. Have a little bit of an intro and then you kind of kick into the actual song. So let's listen to her intro. I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. She gives you, she gives you so much on every note. You heard the way she ended that? Yes. You. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. When I hear that, I hear the longing, the emotion, what she really means, what she's saying and that, you can hear that desire every syllable. Some people hit the notes, you know, like, I've ever been, I ever wrote anything this good. I would probably just hit the notes, you know what I mean? But like you said, she makes every single note pregnant with meaning and you feel it inside your soul. And also this is sort of a 90s thing. But like, oh yeah. That makes me very jolly. But no, but that is a thing and I feel like in the 90s people did these runs, which we started to realize just how much people were running for the 90s so that by the time Christina Aguilera comes along and like, you know, Christina could take, I love you and make a three minute song. Right. Like just with just runs. That's exactly. Exactly. But this is when runs are not completely overdone and this is sort of like her saying, hey, this is, I'm going to murder this. Right. I think R&B too. Yes, I say R&B. Yes. Because also what I hear in that that very long is reminds me a lot of Luther Vandross house when I'm home. Yes. He says with at the end, saying kind of run, he's going down, she's going up, stretching that note. But they're taking the same steps. That mel-melismatic way of taking one syllable and having multiple notes, like maybe a dozen notes, maybe even more across maybe two, you know, two octaves. Yep. That's leading up to a note that's not particularly grand. Yeah. The you turn into that. The me and house is not a home. No, it's very church. It's very church. It's landing the plane after you've done this long, long journey. And R&Bernard was here. He brought up Luther Vandross in Congress. Here's the Mariah Carey. He said, Mariah Carey is female Luther with a whistle register. Perfectly put. And I hear that in this song. Like you said, Luther tends to go down. So you could go, see, I didn't want to do that. I'm glad you did it. Well, see, I know that I can't sing like Luther. So I have no shame. No one can. But Mariah goes high. And it's wonderful. Okay. So there's four takes of Mariah. And she's basically quadrupling herself. So I'll play you one layer at a time. That's going through the entire track, by the way. And that's separate from the backing vocals, which we'll hear after we go through the leads. So starting from verse one, and I'll give you one Mariah at a time. I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing. Here's the second one. Don't care about the present. Three. Four. I don't need to hang my stocking. There up on the fireplace. That is so good. Can you now play some of that chorus that we know so well? Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas is you. Oh, we want for Christmas this four Mariah carries. She's quadrupled up. Oh my goodness. This reminds me a lot of faith Evans. There's a lot of this kind of vocal stack in our song as well. As soon as I get home, like that chorus, do you never hear this single? I don't remember why I was the first time I heard as soon as I get home. I was actually driving home and I heard this all come out. I was like, whoo, this song. It was so hard. Kind of like how I met a boy from the outcast in an elevator random. Is that true? I know him. I met him before. I met him before. Yeah, I was here. Wait, but wait. What a, oh, because you were in an elevator. Why am I so dumb? You're like me and you on this elevator going to floor two. But the step for the vocal stacking is incredible. It's also another not to aren't her R&B roots. Let's also bring in some of the backing vocals. These are by Kelly Price. Wow, I did not know that. Wow, I did not know that. Did not know Kelly Price is on the song. Kelly Price. Oh my goodness. Yeah, Kelly Price. We're going to hear vocals in a minute, but talk about an historic R&B career. She was Mariah's one of her lead backing vocalists for a while and she was singing with a choir. And she went to the daydream tour when she decided to go solo. She actually watched Mariah. Because Mariah would sing hero alone. She would clear this stage of backup singers and everything. And she watched Mariah do that. And she was like, it's my turn to do that for myself. I can't be like, I can't be, I was her mother for the rest of my time. Yeah, and it, I mean, it was tough because she and Mariah really loved each other and it was a great gig. Yeah. But it was time for her to bark her own and it worked. She had some smash hits pretty soon. I mean, a friend of mine, he proposed. She has, and she's still quite the R&B. Oh, absolutely. Kelly's a legend in R&B service. Does she work? And so her sister's also on backing vocalist, Sean Ray. Right. Do the two of them? Do they work together? I don't think this is serious in the industry anymore, but I'm sure she probably sings with her when she needs to. Well, there are two of the three and the third is Melanie Daniels and they all have gospel backgrounds and I think you can hear that in the stack. So let's listen. Oh my gosh, here we go. And I. I hear that Kelly Christness in there. I already. Yeah, I hear it. Yeah. And church. I was very church, very calm response. I'll give you some context for that. So let's put all the vocals together in that moment. And I, it gives it that meatiness that you know, you feel when you listen to the song. It is worth noting interestingly. It's also a unison note. They are all singing the same note. They're not singing harmony right here. So right now we are hearing, you know, four marias and three backing vocals. So seven voices is singing two notes. No, it's very interesting. Oh, I want four Christmas is you. And they all sing those notes. They're all in unison. All seven voices. It's so interesting. There's no harmony. Now, I did find is that something that Phil did on a lot of his records, Phil Spector? Like when he's built in the wall of sound, like did he tend to have backing vocals that matched what Ronnie was singing? Absolutely. And I noticed that recently I was listening to a banana ramasong and I was like, you know, they're really harmonizing much. So it is, I think, kind of a classic. There are harmonies in some of those sham girl laws. It's their classic girl groups, obviously, of screams. But there's also a lot of three women singing the same note and making it more powerful. I'm going to say what's really interesting about this song is that we have four voices come, Mariah. And they're all very powerful voices. Very powerful. Typically, you have one that's more like Demi or Mariah. Yeah. These are all in and in and out. All right. We know Mariah is queen of the bridge. I need to hear it, please. She takes to the bridge. I said I want to bring the water really able to please bring my favorite to me. Oh, what? Do you want to hear that with the backing vocals too? Yeah. I'm always like so tempted to throw in the ad lives whenever I hear that. Feel free. I won't do that today. karaoke maybe. Yeah. Oh. There is your harmony stack. That is the church choir. That is the church choir. I'll give it out. Here we go. That's the Mormon tabernacle choir, but the opposite. It's not Mormon. That's the opposite of the opposite of that. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Joseph Smith. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Wow. Wow. I mean everyone always talks about Miriah in the whistle ton, of course. The whistle register everyone talks about Miriah, but her voice is so much more than that. Full, all four octaves. Yeah. And you really hear that here. I had to close my eyes. It was too much synopsis. Like if you did not read the liberal liberal liberal liberal liberal liberal liberal liberal Of course, the Wizard of Editors looked everyone talks about it. I think that I'm a ria, but her voice is so much more than that. Absolutely. Full and all four octaves. Yeah. You really hear that here. The belting is so emotive. I was in it. I was in it. I had to close my eyes. It was too much intensity. I didn't know you were doing it because I was doing it. And one last thing I got to play, it's that you. You. You. And to be clear, that's the last all I went for Christmas is you. If you needed the context, that is the ultimate you. You can't get youier than that you. You never hear the descent part. So that's great to hear that. I never hear it in the mix. I'll play it for you now with the backing vocals that come in interspersed. And now we're starting the call and response. The last minute of the song is. Does it get church here? That's you. This is exciting because this is the fade out. So let's hear what happens after the fade out because there's like another 60 seconds of singing here. Let's listen. How is this cutting room for? Wow. Oh, that's not real black. Tommy was like, I don't know. Kill it. Kill it. Kill it. The public must never hear this. We get that extra. That's 40 seconds after the fade out. And then there's one take that keeps on going because she was doubling, tripling, quadrupling. Let's just listen to this one. Okay. All right. All right. Here's my thing. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Album her lower range is so rich the jibbara dwee think about that and I'm here I got that scouting she's scouting yes Yes, there's a clip of her singing just with a piano and a jazz bar and it's beautiful and that's and I was like I I need it I mean that's don't leave that money on the table Mariah Give us that jazz out the grunge album please look this is just for Leslie that got 20 more seconds It would be incomplete this will last 20 seconds. She's never heard before There's like eight seconds that control the diaphragm Strong throughout yep, I feel a vision of love that last note of vision love and how you legendary Similar I mean crazy that last note in vision love is one for the one for the history books At this point is safe to say that Mariah has created a whole brand out of Christmas right after Thanksgiving We see her teasing this song on her social media pages. She's got plenty of Christmas sponsorships partnerships and Commercial circulating. Yeah, there's there's a whole complex if you have right here because complex Tagline it's time Yeah, but I mean you can see her her annual Christmas show that she now on tour I think it started off to show my wife and some of her friends went to it recently and they they said it was amazing It's great. Yeah, I went to Hollywood Bowl. Yeah, it's really good Especially in LA should typically bring somebody out like she brought out JD last year Which is really funny because they're like best friends. So it was a great show to see But then also she has parts of like Venmo She has Amazon partnership now where she actually is selling like inflatable Christmas decorations for like your yard. Oh, man. Yeah, I can have a big inflatable barriom. I actually can Her with her well, she's like in a Santa Claus She has a sleigh Yeah, and then she also has parts of like K jewelers, Victoria's secrets So in addition to the money from performing and riding the song She's also getting all the extra bread does she want a one song partnership because I say it just saying Don't leave that money on the table Mariah And look we obviously know with the success of this song that so many people love it adore it But there have been some folks who've come after Mariah because of the popularity of the song specifically a Countryman called Vince Vance and the valiance luxury can you tell us about what kind of beef they tried to start with Mariah to sell some records Right well Vince Vance and the valiance are a group from New Orleans who in 1989 wrote a song with the same title All I want for Christmas is you sung by Linda Lyle it sounds like this So here's the thing the bottom line is there's nothing in this song which is the same It's a memorize on there are no melodic I thought those Mariahs that was a Mariah Carey Exactly, you want a little bit after you talk like that? No, I'm joking It is the song title which is the same and nothing else and the fact of it being a Christmas song with some of the Christmas tropes But you cannot copy right a song title, but it didn't stop them from seeking $60 million in their first of two lawsuits They they in in 2022 they filed late legal action seeking 60 million in damages and then they dismissed the case voluntarily But then brought another case a different case last year after hiring a new legal team significantly The legal team that had filed suit and got a settlement for the song shake it off by Taylor Swift So they're like let's go with someone who who won So that's currently in the midst Yeah, I'm alive also read that currently the judge is inclined to dismiss it I mean it should be dismissed there really isn't anything there What they're what they're trying to trade on is quote Carey's song features a quote unique linguistic structure similar to his own tune They have this list basically what they clearly done is looked at the blurred lines lawsuit And taken a page out of the playbook which is that none of the things in that song were exactly the same But things were similar and they were encouraged feeling they do not have any of the same feeling Mariah has also been sued before yeah in her book she talks about how she was sued for hero and two of them are the things She's like again, I write on my stuff yeah here the receipts, which is why you don't hear about any crazy settlements Yeah on her end good for her and precedent success for this song But the relationship between Mariah and her co-writer Walter does go south Can you tell us a little bit about that dispute? Yeah, it's unfortunate Look it sounds like from in the media they're sort of talking to each other So there's these interviews over the years and you can tell they're reading each other's interviews Yeah, and Mariah claims in a few places not just also on her DVD and she did like a special on Amazon So she's increasingly over the years it sounds like in the storytelling starting to leave Walter out of it and maybe increase The earlyness of when she wrote the song for example She said in billboard a few years ago. I am proud of the song that I quote basically wrote as a kid on my little Casio keyboard She says quote I put on it's a wonderful life downstairs You could hear it playing throughout the house and I went into this small room and there was a little keyboard in there and I started playing So a little bit later He starts to see the Walter interviews over the years because I'll almost every year He gets you know call to do an interview about the song and before that he's sort of ignoring it He's not mentioning he just sort of tells the same Phil Spector and the piano and that this and that story that we've been hearing Since the 90s but by 2018 he's starting to say quote my memory may be a little different from Mariahs So in 2013 things get a little beefy Mariah tells access Hollywood Referring to the song she's like trust me there are so many parts I'm like, oh, I hate that right there. Why do they make me keep that because it was before I had full control of her Everything on the record and somebody would be like no just leave that note really. It's good Which when I saw this quote I was like that's really interesting. She's been 20 years She's really processing you know importantly who she was back then and this song is obviously Voking Christmas for all of us, but it's also evoking the story of her life then and she hears it So maybe she's starting when I when I read that it was very poignant to me because I maybe realize that If she had the strength and power that she did in her later years at the time might have been a different Compa might have been a different song she might have made different choices might have fought harder for a thing that at the time She didn't feel like she could fight for yeah, he was in Mariah hip-hop Mariah later earlier Would have seen hip-hop Mariah earlier Basically what comes next is that Walter chooses his words carefully in a few interviews because he's starting to get some hate on the internet from Mariah fans Who are starting to believe that Walter had nothing to do with the song? So it sounds like Walter's getting defensive and he's going every single year at this time I have to defend myself because a lot of people just don't believe I'm a co-writer of the song and finally in 2022 He goes on this podcast called hot takes and deep dives and just let's loose We don't have to get into all the ugly things he says But basically he says 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 So that is the back which made him sound even better to I know lamb Yeah Sure that really some little girl's gonna play what I Hey It's Tommy Matoli out there. You probably didn't do himself any favors with that People just have to read the line of notes. There's never been a moment where he wasn't credited in his song right? It's true 5050 you have granted how the 50 is split you know, whatever it was but yeah exactly But that's always been the case. We just have to pay more attention Yeah Look we've already talked about how all I want for Christmas is you is a massive song but get this this song holds three Guinness world records holds the record for the highest charting holiday song and the hot 100 by a solo artist The most stream track on Spotify in 24 hours and the most weeks in the UK singles top 10 chart for a Christmas song And when the song top the charts again in 2020 Mariah became the first artist to land number one hits on the billboard hot 100 in four decades Wow, that's insane. There you go Mariah. So with all that said Leslie What do you think is the legacy of all I want for Christmas is you will it stand the test of time? I mean David Foster himself said This is the last song that's gonna be Christchurch, Shannon after that the dark clothes And I have to believe I mean granted my personal whose cannon includes instincts Americans happy holidays and it's a Christmas. That's his child, but that's just me But yeah, I mean yeah, honestly somebody like David Foster says that you got to listen I mean the song you hear it everywhere. Yeah, you hear stores commercials whatever you know one of us doesn't know this song It's such an indelible part of the yeah, it's absolutely absolutely true and make sure that Mariah stays relevant forever. Yes She will never go away. How about you DeYalem? You know I I'm a fan of this song and a fan of the Christmas cannon. I'm not sure we need any more Christmas song And this is this is my theory. It's like you know anytime nowadays a person We've got enough. No seriously like whether they're like just a random celebrity or or a band or or or Rap group or not be like when I hear you're coming out with a Christmas album It sounds so cynical to me like it just sounds like hey, I want to you know It's like winning the musical lottery. It's like hey, I might create a song that's gonna be around for as long as all I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey and I just I feel like unless you have something to add to the cannon It's not already there maybe sit this one out. I use the example of a Quon City DJs have a song that I absolutely love what you want for Christmas It was basically like if two live crew did a Christmas song and it's one of my favorites on collude That's like a perfect song That's everything I like a very religious Who days vocoders listen like you take you take 12 the 12 days of Christmas and you put a Luther Campbell beat underneath it And it's the Quad City DJs with one of my favorite all-time Christmas songs again I have no problem with people one of my favorite ones is I'm spinning Christmas with a Dalek Which is a dr. Who song but dr. Who theme song I should say but unless you're bringing something new to the cannon Maybe don't do one more song about this And we had you really intentional like with Mariah Carey's Christmas album She said I mentioned she had made three original songs But she was very intentional about making one that feels like church so that she has one in this day Then you have all of her Christmas is you which is the Like a throwback and then we have the slow jam which is miss you most Christmas time So I just don't make stuff just making it Yeah If you're making the Christmas song because you want to do a Christmas song I guess that's cool But if you just do it because you think you might hit the musical lottery Maybe maybe do something for hot thanks given's not getting a lot of love Try putting together Thanksgiving playlist y'all and it's not as easy as you would think I'd do you over the river and through the woods you start to you start running out of stuff really quick So again, there are other holidays. Let's take a stab at those All right Leslie It's been great to have an actual lamb on our show today But now it's time to put your Mariah Carey skills to the ultimate test Here come the lion We're going to play a game with you called six degrees of Mariah Carey So here's how it's gonna happen luxury and I are going to Give you an artist and you need to link them to Mariah in six steps or less Okay, you can connect them through samples artist they've collaborated with basically a six degrees of Kevin Bacon But with musical icon Mariah Carey. So what challenge you to connect Mariah to Jota see you've got 60 seconds. Oh Okay Mariah Carey Produced a fantasy remix with Puff daddy, but she did Puff daddy worked at uptown records, which is where Jota see was signed there you go She didn't need six steps. We give it up for the ultimate lamb give it up for Feet the clock big time Leslie Guam she killed that I'm so impressed By the way, there was a baby face connect too, but we won't even get into that. Oh, yeah Let's surprise Our respect when our respect We've got one last thing before we in this episode is time for one more song This is the segment where we share a deep cut or hidden gym with you the one song nation and with each other Today I want to go first because I'm so excited. I just discovered this song Uh, I'm gonna hop right in it's called so I just by Suria Sen I Mean listen You've got a show business AG sample in there next level nighttime remix for those keep it track at home He interpolates a kid cutty lyric for the course and I just love this sound It's like my favorite era of UK house and like that that sound the disclosure had about 10 or 12 years ago With a solid MC who knows his hip hop rapping over the beat. It's music that makes me want to go out and London for a night of fun And I do wish that there were more of this Style of like you know, you've got Suria Sen you've got a getz you've got other people who I don't think they've blown up here in the US But they're basically rapping over house music. I just I wish this was more of a scene here in the US What what did you think of that one? I mean, I think it is a little bit of a scene in the US You know where to go and you know nobody's telling you and stay up very late Don't go to work the next day right exactly That's the only way well listen if anybody knows where that scene is in LA or New York or even in land I just DM me because I will come there. I will support that and Yeah, what did you think Blake? I know we have a lot of similar tastes do that as everything I like in in a track It's the disclosure thing really had me thinking about yeah like the deep house sound of a bunch of those sounds fresh to my ears again It never really goes out of style deep house. It never really doesn't and I also want to say UK rap. I think sometimes it's a bad thing Sometimes here in the US because we think it's all Because we think it's all like central C and there's so much diversity in the UK sound that I just want to see a little bit I want to see a little bit of their diversity start blowing up over here Leslie you brought in a one more song. Yes, I do have one more song actually. I am you know representing Lamboley here And I was I discussed earlier our album is butterfly. Okay. That is the album for For the fans. That's the one it was the song from butterfly Fourth of July It still sounds like Christmas My girl is her holidays fourth of July is such an amazing song. I'm glad you drew that connection I'm glad you drew that connection because I was like oh for the July now. That's another holiday that needs more song It I mean it's so but honestly the lyrics are it's all about being outside with you know the person you love and fireworks and everything and it sounds it sounds like what you're hearing like you feel like you are in the grass with your lover when you hear it That's really cool luxury my man one more song. What do you got? So there's a song that's huge at Christmas in England that I'd never heard in my life until I was in my I guess 20s And I was playing bass very briefly for a band in San Francisco with two British American brothers And they were like look we're doing a Christmas song for this um benefit and I'd never heard it in my life before So this there's probably a divide right here for podcasts listeners bunch of people be like you don't know this song. What are you crazy? And then we'll see in this room. Who knows this song? It's slayed Mary Christmas everybody Do you guys know this song? I don't think I've heard that. I know this is not big in America But it is like the number one song in England or one of the top Christmas songs in England. It's the Mariah Carey Christmas song Of pub culture I mean according to the stats. Yeah Mariah Carey's all of Chris is that was you was doing numbers in the UK as well I'm out of kick slate to the curve at this point. Yeah, I don't know what it is about maybe because they sound British I'm assuming slate is British. Oh, yes later. Very British It reminds me of my one of my favorite videos on social media last year This is a clip from video where someone has made up fake lyrics for Paul McCartney's Christmas song versus John Lennon's Christmas song. This is called Paul versus John on Christmas This is fake, but it does sum up the differences in their personality makes me laugh every time I was like what better distillation of Paul versus God could ever exist fine energy Was that six seconds long literally is that a vine? It's not very long. That's not very long As always if you have an idea for one more song you can find us on Instagram and tiktok You can find me on Instagram at diolo diololo or on tiktok at diolorinal and you can find me on Instagram at luxury LUXX ury and on tiktok at luxury XX you can also watch full episodes of one song on YouTube right now Just search for one song podcast. We love it if you like and subscribe And if you made it this far, I think that means you like this podcast So please don't forget to give us five stars Leave a review and share it with someone you think would like it. It really helps keep the show going All right, Leslie. We're gonna end this thing right about now luxury Thank you so much for being on our show is thank you for having me. It's let me crash. I learned so much We couldn't have done it without you. She is executive producer of the show Leslie Wong I am producer DJ songwriter and musicologist luxury and I'm actor writer director and sometimes DJ diolo riddle and this is one song. We'll see you next time