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 to y'all in this episode We're gonna unwrap the sonic magic that made this song an instant addition to the holiday music canon That's right. I get ready because you're gonna hear Mariah's marvelous isolated vocals in all their 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 Wow 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 a certified diamond That's right. Y'all know 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 it's a little underground duty you might 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 music on this luxury AKA the guy who whispers 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 this become a Christmas standard from one of the best-selling artists of all time We knew what we need 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 thank you for coming all the show problem out of the control room into the guest seat 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 family around this album plays every year without fail Topped about them not just the song the entire you know, okay, top to bottom. Okay already in a different class of People who love this song 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? Okay, we always assume because Mariah had a little land like it sounds very close to Mary had a little lamb, but you told me that is not the case That's not true what I learned it came from an inside joke between Mariah and trailer ends was her background singer for every yes So apparently there was an artist who shower my 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 Tray I thought it was funny And it ended as an inside joke and then she like brought it to her fans and then the fans decided you know We're gonna 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's right. Right. Why is why is Mariah in this cute? Why is there a cuteness in my mind? Why do you think 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 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 would 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 wouldn't that's so that she's like I just want to find 12 year old Mariah Yeah, exactly. You read her memoir. She had a rough childhood and some pretty dramatic things happened to her Yeah, 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 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 was so I've always loved that album when I was a little kid I really loved emotions emotions was so good the whole album not just the track the new day 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 So 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 don't do that. You know I know what's coming. Let's go with me. So apparently she's a songwriter We will get to that. No, we're gonna get to that As a kid I love that album, but the album that made you realize I was the artist of my life was a butterfly album. Oh wow Every song on there is incredible. She was going through this post divorced from Tommy So we really got to know who Mariah was as a person because she hinted at the hip-hop R&B stylings How much she enjoyed that we didn't realize how fully a mess she wasn't that until that album I mean she was working mob deep on that and both us. Yeah. Oh, well, that's butterfly. Yeah, that's butterfly 1998 Because there's an album in between the emotions daydream fantasy was on daydream Yes, that was the more I felt like because by this point of like 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 I'm part black here. Yep, exactly We're really jumping ahead because we're gonna get into all that 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 a 24 and she had released three albums her self-titled debut album in 1990 Emotions in 1991 and music box in 1993 also Mariah already had eight number one singles including vision of love Wishing man, I mean if you could get a slow-dance division. I love you were in there 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 time was hola head of Sony Columbia Records at that time. Is this the last album? She's gonna release under Tommy now. Okay. He kind of the idea of doing Christmas album Which is really interesting. 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 gonna refer to her memoir a lot here read it read it I listen to it. Of course. Yeah, she mentions that she didn't realize how popular she was because she was requested away in Of state, 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 Really? This is really pretty internet. Wow. It would be very easy to be convinced. Oh, you know I'm like I'm pretty big in the tri-state area. Maybe you know, like didn't know that like little Diallo was in Atlanta listening to her She's finally realizing her power at this moment. He's just a Christmas album and you know as a songwriter She's up to the task. I the other thing that's interesting about Tommy's I feel like he tried to keep her from being too black, you know, I mean like it's folks, you know around this time, you know Early as 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 elements 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? It's been very open about her heritage But it's just that like 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 black her dad was black? Yeah from New York had Venezuelan roots But yeah, yeah, oh sure yeah, so she yeah, she's always very open about that. Yeah But she also mentioned a lot Tommy who tried to wash it off of her like she was a young person doing adult contemporary Which sounds great, but you know, she's a 20-something year old from New York. She's in New Jecks when it's coming She's in the hip-hop, but she wasn't able to express that early in the early days Right, because Tommy thought that was gonna suppress her ability to be accepted by the mainstream Yeah, and it's all he knew yeah, he knew a duck contemporary in jazz So that's where he pushed her exactly. He wanted her in areas of music where he had some control and sort of like a knowledge base Right, and even and she even says in her book that she um, he would never let her wear her hair straight because it looked like it was curly hair That had been straightened and he said with her hair being curly. He made her look more Italian Wow, and she was like ironically my hair is curly because I'm black Honestly the guy gospel bit is was huge. I mean, even before this album though, like in the dream lover video. Yes, she had hip-hop dancers all throughout it. You know, but she's always up and down. Tommy was like, "Hey, we gotta hire these guys." That's my Tommy. He used to that for the rest of the episode. We actually had dancers even some day. She did a New Jackson wing version of that song. That is incredible. That's a version I sort of know. Exactly. This era always has two versions. Sometimes I even hear the original version of fantasy. She is the queen of the remix. I mean, we'll realize that. But anyway, she has those versions. She also has the dance version of songs as well. But we'll get back to the original album. 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 influence comes from. And she knows how to sing with a choir. A lot of pop stars sing with choirs. They're not really meshed. 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 both. She's an opera singer. So let's talk a little bit about Christmas albums 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 in the 90s. Like in 1994, the folks releasing Christmas albums were Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Kenny G. Right. The favorite of the show. 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 Ann Lablebaugh says you do an album. You do the album. Right. And how old is she at this time? Yeah, she's in her 20s. Right. Also that age grams. Oh, I'm a crazy. Empowered dynamic. 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 and Vegas residencies have changed. If you go to Vegas now, you can see a lot of like the latest hip hop performers at 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 were at a decline. Yeah. Now everyone does them pretty early in your career too. Could be the second album. Truly. I mean, 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. of their contract. Like not even like a Christmas album. Christmas album at some point. Right. And my guess is that something to do with this Mariah Carey? It's funny that you found that in the contracts, you know, because 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 Christmas. Oh, dare you. I'm sorry. It's very well constructed history. This is this is the this is the working town of history is over here. 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, 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 it 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 nostalgia being at the heart of it, era one is that Tin Pan Alley dusting off the old cold quarter song playable. 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 Cole 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 song. 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 "Prosby." That's the one. Lish, by the way, my parents thought was really racist for the long term. Oh, oh, let me tell you. Let's talk about that. They're like, wait, wait. I don't get that pretty good. I love the thing. I love that you took it that way. I'll never forget when I was a kid, the "Glueplex" clan had a march through Cummings, Georgia, which is just outside of it. Wow, fuzzy memories. I remember that their float said, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." Oh, god. Not saying that being was the most like some progressive lion, but it was interesting to see that song, a particular co-opted by people who interpreted the way that you did as a child. It's a beautiful song that has nothing to do with "White Nationalism" to be played. And it's one of the few great songs that has nothing 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. 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. One of the original batches of eras, I would say, of holiday eras. 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 isn't there. 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, like, that song brings you down. Like, what a downer of a song. I love 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 Trichovsky. 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 is 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 Trichovsky 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 Leste, or sometimes pronounced Che Leste. It means heavenly in French, and you've heard it. And it sounds like this. So that's from Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Also from the Eminence commercial that comes out. Santa, he exists. It is perhaps the most evocative sound for Christmassy years. Sure. is the sound of the sort of child's toy, music box, high-pitched bell. It was a brand new instrument. Tchaikovsky heard it when he was traveling to Paris and he's like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna use this in my next piece because no one's heard it before. It's gonna 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. Petersburg. No one there must know about it. I'm afraid Rimsky Korsakov might hear of it." - It's gonna leak. - It's gonna leak, it's gonna 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 ones because if I don't write them, then Prince will steal them. - Like, it's just like the same thing. - My ideas. - It's under the years earlier. - Oh, there's sensitive about they should. - It's true. - You've answered something that I wonder for so long. I was like, "Why does Harry Potter music remind me of Christmas?" - It is because of the dance of the-- - It is because of the dance of the-- - The "Headwicks" theme from Harry Potter. (ominous music) - It's want to be my neighbor from Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. It's a song that evokes childhood, it evokes magic, it evokes Christmasiness. - And Christmas, 'cause I love watching the Harry Potter films with my kids at Christmas time in particular, 'cause I do, do, do, do, 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 the 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 Christmasiness and what Mariah and her co-writer, who we'll be talking about a little bit in, 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. - 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 'cause it sounds like it was Tommy Metola's favorite Christmas album and it may be Mariah's as well. But that's the early rock era, 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 gonna 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, bone, dough, dough, dough, dough, yeah, it's still swingy. It's still got that jazz, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. - Rockin' around the Christmas tree. - All of these songs are rockin' around, but 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, you know, that everybody wants to rule the world. - James Brown and Fred Wesley doing it to death. ♪ Gotta have a bump, good death ♪ ♪ 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 realized or they 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 Ronets, 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 Crystals version of Santa Claus is coming to town. Again, maybe my favorite Christmas song and recording of all time. ♪ Gotta have a bump, a bump, a bump, a bump, a bump ♪ ♪ And a bump, a bump, a bump, a bump, a bump, a bump ♪ So already, if you've been paying attention to the subject, you can make a checklist of the genre tropes right there, right? How did that out and 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 you had 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 Randy MC, which is one of my personal favorites. We gotta listen to that right now. Let's hear it. There's 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-year-old. Other Christmas songs from the '80s that I think are absolute. Mainstays are Christmas Rappin by The Way Traces. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] 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. Talk about the 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 gonna have to agree with that. Shake a hand, shake a hand. This Christmas will be very special Christmas from me. And so there are a lot of new wave hip-hop, pop Christmas songs by younger artists. And I believe that that fourth era might help open the door for a Mariah. For Alcastan TLC, who we talked about a couple episodes ago, their Christmas album produced both Slay Ride the first outcast single players ball. Like, where's the man? Let us know with night. Let us know. so I can't play as well was supposed to be a Christmas. Oh, that's why it starts. That's why you got to get into a lot like not Christmas is beginning to look a lot like what. So we got the jingle bells in there too. And it's got the jingle bells in there. John Rodtropes, John Rodtropes to hit to hear organized noise who produced both of those songs. Slay right by TLC and I'll cast his playable 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 Tin Pan Alley and the Jazz, and the Jazz Swing and the Rock. And by the way, it is worth pointing out that in the Phil Spector and that third era, he was using a lot of those things too. They were already nostalgics. We've got layers and layers of nostalgic. 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 like live Christmas shows, she is always wearing like a cute little nutcracker outfit and there are candy canes everywhere. All her dances are decked out in Christmas. - Are they doing the bus B Berkeley like dance routines like in the video? - Yep. - Like that's evoking 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 Carey. - 'Cause she couldn't just do it coming out wearing like a black, you know, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I think it would work. - When she sings, 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, that's literally everything. - I just got chills. - Right, you know, I have to wear my right. - Oh, 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 songwriter. - A songwriter. - That's right. Here's a clip of Furby Stabby that fact many times in her career. - 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 the 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 lead real about that. The other 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? - All of a sudden. - It was Maria and Whitney, for some reason there'd only be 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 with them liked being pitted against me. - Sure, yeah. - Like, 'cause again, there's no need. We can have more than one. for her voice. - And 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 my number ones, except for Albi there, she wrote. - That's crazy. - I mean, her whole album's written by Mariah, and she works with other people, but she, first hand writes all of these songs. So, I mean, and yeah, I mean, she's in the song right, it's Hall of Fame. She did not get there in writing her own songs. Yeah, so like I said, that clip, I love that clip. It makes it very clear, like, do not forget. Yes, she has this incredible voice, and she's an amazing performer, but she also is a songwriter. - We're gonna 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 is, you're trying to math an unmathable thing. So, what we get to, we'll be getting-- - But then when the money comes in, when the money comes in, you gotta forget it. - So this is 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 are some people that feel like some singers understandably feel like they're undercredited 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, 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, and 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 a guy who really breaks down, like who gets wet, but you're also a songwriter yourself. And so, we'll have that perspective too. To be clear, Mariah co-wrote the album, Merry Christmas, and the song, all I went for Christmas is you, we've walked her off an off CF, 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 pretty unstable, but you always mentioned, Christmas with time that her mom would really try to be a homemaker and really try and have a nice celebration. - She try and have the pot of popery, put in water, make the whole thing up like that. - Fruit cake, fruit cake. - All of that. Unfortunately, Mariah said it would typically get ruined because fights would happen, but she still appreciates the time of the year. So she created the song because it's 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, but 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 Athanasia. He is the 50/50 co-writer of this song, according to the official records, and according to 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 Athanasia, 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? 'Cause it's hit number one, like four or five times. - I don't know. - I just counted one. - That's count of one, sorry. So I guess he's got 14 number ones. - Because he had some smash number ones too, that if you were waiting them, would count as a million songs, 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. - 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 violin as Jean-Luc Ponti 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 Nu Orchestra. These guys are monster musicians, like musicality-wise, like in terms of their skills on instruments. By the way, Randy Jackson is on bass in that band, so it's a super group of artists. - Oh, wait, from 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 uses her through emancipation to me, me. - Okay, so he made, okay, we're gonna talk about the split, the split that happens in the late '90s, the Tommy Mariah's 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 '84. ♪ I'm free with the love against my face ♪ - He's a synths on Tina 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. - It was Whitney, yeah. - Wow, creative. - Yeah, no, I know the difference. - You wanted another chance to be able to have that debut. So he's on, I wanna dance with somebody. He's playing keyboards on so 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 Naruto, Michael Walden, introduces him, and they work on vision of love together. So Tommy Metola takes notice of his work, and says, "Who's this guy doing all the tracks? "All the music." And he's told, "That's not his guy. "Walter, he does all the programming, does the music." And Tommy says, "Oh, I wanna 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. ♪ Love takes time to heal the heart ♪ 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 go inside 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 him. - He went with Tommy, but we're gonna 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 get ready to hear those isolated and marvelous Mariah Carey vocal stems with our guest, Leslie Guam. We'll be right back. - Electric, I gotta say I am under the gun, man. - Under the gun. - 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 gonna be putting out if we don't get our stuff together. We gotta like, we gotta understand it like, it's easy to lose track of how much money you're spending. - I know, it's so hard to manage every day. - The 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 spinning 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 401K's 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. - In the netline, but that's what it is. - But now I'm easily keeping track of my finances and my year in financial to-do lists with Monarch. And that means that I can relax and actually enjoy my egg nod for once. Monarch is built for people with busy lives. If you've put off organizing your finances, Monarch's 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 one song at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code one song. Welcome back to one song, "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 of cool chords in there. She says yeah, that's yeah, this is all this is all history testimony from the billboard interview in 2012. This is Walter's Walter claims for you Hamilton fans up 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 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 mind you so that 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 Marahakima and drums fill in gangs we talked about on the Michael Jackson so he's all over the thriller one of the greatest keyboard players of our of our era and they played the song they recorded it and it just didn't sound right Tommy said it sounded to country to country they lost the pocket he was like it's got to be there yeah it can't be there it can't be there it can't be though hillbilly stuffed and it can't be for the ghetto it's got to 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 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 help 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 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 I'm like good yeah yeah and next you know for all is on every single right right yeah he's he talks about on the death punks on get lucky he he didn't know that it would ever be 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 did it sounds like me doing this right here a little table right here the dinky fills is like my favorite New York punk band 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 itself Walter is killing them drums so those are 1994 programs tambourine triplets that's tambourine we're in twelve it sounds like it sounds like 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 dada it's what you do with a wrist dada dada dada right and it sounds like this in the mix dada dada dada here's your twelve eight dada dada dada 123456 triplet triplet there's also like a timpony there let's listen to that timpony it's important it's like the 808 of the orchestra so you get a little pitch there that sounds like the beginning of one two step down down down there's a joys and gentlemen all right and then there's a kanga which I'll play separate and then you'll hear everything together here's the kanga 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 tell me a second to realize where in the beat that is your triplets 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 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 he knows 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 trope sounds starting with the sleigh bells that's in christmas in holless that's in no no no reinvention there it's in players ball by all case 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 like but let's hear some of the instruments let's go back to I believe it was called the celeste the celeste I did hear somebody from the st. Louis choir on youtube pronounce it with the say last day maybe there's some dispute in the music I just like the phrase say less so much so say leste sounds right up my alley on francey it be celeste which is where it comes from 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 mister sandman by the chord s totally yeah but I definitely hear the dance of the sugar plum fairies when I hear absolutely yeah it evokes 1892 and then it then as as we mentioned before and then that same idea makes its way into all those Phil Spectre songs in the 60s so we are many layers deep into like it sounds like snowsfall evocation yeah 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 what do we have as far as the bass stems we have a very very basic bass line which I'm pretty young as I'm calling a song basic I understand it's a demo they're like relax I'm trying to get in there we're able to get something by the way that she last day was very very distinct so yeah 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 yeah you want to go back on your thoughts are you impressed by this 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 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 don't and let's give that to you with some drums 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 it's the same every single time we heard that in the drums too when we heard the notes the the drum fill and it just sound it's like on the tears for fear is episode where we could like really identify that it was a program snare because the sound was the same there's no variety to like a real drummer it'd be a little bit to a little little hard 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's still a hit well this is where Walter earth is earns his stripes and I 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 you know taking the notes in the in the MIDI role and you know 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 the song this piano which is non-stop and 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 he can play. Maybe he can. I don't know how you do that. The bass notes, du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du The bass note, du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du du (bright music) It's like I'm going, "Come see, come saw." A little feather here and there, maybe. I'm doing the maze. I'm doing maybe hands. That's what it is. Listen. Well, the right hand is doing that. The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. It's just over here. Dumbling 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 in the past maybe referred to as an unusual scale, but to me it's a broken scale. It's like if you were to play a perfect scale, it would almost be out of place in a song. But when I listen to some of my favorite songs, I hear this escalation and it sounds like it's almost the 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 it's 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 the song that is unusual, which is the chord changes. The chord changes map to the melodic choices. Like 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 when you hear that expected note, like regardless of John, like you believe this is a song, and then the note that's not expected comes to you like, oh, oh, yeah, that's, yeah, 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's chord change, one or two of the chord changes in the song, which are unusual, are actually very common. Two songs, not simply of this genre, but also of the era. Let's talk a little bit about the minor plagal cadence trope. Yeah. 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. ♪ This is our remix ♪ 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, a half step. That's all that happens. And it changes the entire feel of that moment. It sounds like it's used to evoke some kind of emotion. I mean, that's the, to me, the evokes a kind of melancholy. 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 gonna go here, but we're not there yet. Oh, it's building tension. It's gonna get there eventually to sound gone there yet. I love that. It creates sense of comfort when you get back home. Listen, we find this in dozens of examples. It's in David Bowie's space Odyssey. It's in a life on Mars. It's also in about six other Beatles songs. You're talking specifically about the minor Plagal. We're talking about this major four to minor four minor Plagal 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 Moriah 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, it gives you a sense of like, oh, that was unexpected, but just, but pleasurable. And melancholy and reminds me of the 60s and the Beatles and all these associations. I hear some tubular bells in there. Can we talk about the bells? Yes, we can. Let's talk about the tubular bells. And 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, dude, dude. That does a lot, that does a lot for the song. The feeling works. Does a lot for the song, but sometimes you can't overthink it. You got to just lay it down where it's groovy, baby. Speaking of which, I did label this one. These are the sax pads, but I added silly, because these, these are silly sax pads. This is not a saxophone pattern. It's not a dinky fill. It's a silly sax. It's not a silly sax. Let's go, let's hear it. I want to hear this. Is it called sax? Well, 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 '93, '94. Listen, no shade on. What's wrong with that? It's not a 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. Look at that. 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, marcato, 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, 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, our checklist of Christmassy Things to Do in the Christmas song, if you have this slower intro, like pretty much half the songs on that full-spector 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 songbook stories. Yeah, do Gellington, all of this. Have a little bit of an intro and then you'll 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. - Oh, God. - On every note. - You heard that the way she ended that? ♪ It's you ♪ - Wow. - Yeah. - When I hear the longing, the emotion, what she really means, what she's saying in that, you can hear that desire every syllable. - Some people hit the notes, you know? Like, (laughs) Ever bit, 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. - Yeah, it's real. - It's real. - And also, this is sort of a '90s thing. But like-- - Oh yeah? (laughs) - No, that makes me very jolly sick of it. - Oh yeah. - 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. - Just to date you. - Just to date exactly. But this is when runs are not completely overdone and this is sort of like her saying, hey, this is, I'm gonna murder this. - Right. - I think R&B too. - Yes, I say R&B. Yes. - 'Cause also what I hear in that very long is, it reminds me a lot of Luther Vandras' house line at home. - Yes. - He says, with at the end, saying kind of run, he's going down, she's going up. - Just stretching that note. - But they're taking the same steps. ♪ Let love ♪ ♪ With ♪ - That melismatic way of taking one syllable and having multiple notes, like maybe a dozen notes, maybe even more, across maybe two octaves. - Yep, that's leading up to a note that's not, particularly grand. - Yeah. - Turn it into that. - The me and house is not a home. - No, it's very church, it's landing the plane. - After you've done this long, long journey. - When Durand Bernard was here, he brought up Luther Vandras' encounters with Mariah Carey. He said, "Mariah Carey is female Luther "with a whistle measure." - Perfectly put that in this song. - Like you said, Luther tends to go down. So you could go, "Ooh, 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, I can't. - 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 Moriah at a time. ♪ I don't want a lot for Christmas ♪ ♪ There is just one thing I need ♪ Here's the second one. ♪ Don't care about the present ♪ ♪ Underneath the Christmas tree ♪ Four. ♪ I don't need to hang my stockin' ♪ ♪ 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 won for Christmas this four Moriah carries. ♪ You, baby ♪ - She's clippin' through, put up. - Oh my goodness. This reminds me a lot of Faith Evans. She's a lot of this kind of vocal stack in her song as well. Like, as soon as I get home, like that chorus, do you never hear the single-- - I still remember when 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, "Woo, this song goes 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 there. - Wait, but wait, what about, oh, 'cause you were in an elevator. Why am I so dumb? (laughing) - You were like me. And you on this elevator going to floor two? - Exactly. (laughing) - Yeah, but the step for the vocal stacking is incredible. And it's also another not to aren't her R&B roots. - Well, let's also bring in some of the backing vocals. Now, these are by Kelly Price. - Wow, I didn't know that. - Did not know Kelly Price is on this song. - Kelly Price, oh my goodness. Yeah, Kelly Price, we're gonna hear vocals in a minute, but talk about an historic R&B career. - Absolutely. - She was Mariah's, one of her lead backing vocalists for a while when she was singing with a choir. Up until the day dream tour, when she decided, you know, she actually watched Mariah, 'cause Mariah would sing hero alone. She would create a 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, I can't be an atheist. - I was her mother for the rest of my time. - Yeah, I mean, it was tough because she and Mariah really loved each other and it was a great gig. But it was time for her to embark on her own ending. 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 right now. - Oh, absolutely. Kelly's a legend in R&B, so. - Does she work? And so her sister's also on backing vocals. Sean Ray, do the two of them. Do they work together? - I'm not sure if she's doing that. - I hear that Kelly Priceness in there. - I already hear it. - Yeah, and church. - Calling response. Very church. Very calling response. - I'll give you some context for that. Let's put all the vocals together in that moment. - It gives it that meatiness that 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 a harmony right here. So right now we are hearing four marias and three backing vocals. So seven voices is singing two notes. It's essentially very interesting. - All I want for 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 Specter? - Like when he's building the wall of sound. Did he tend to have backing vocals that matched what Ronnie was singing? - Absolutely right. That is a girl group thing. And I noticed that recently. I was listening to a banana rama song. 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 Shangri-La's. - Yeah. - They're classic girl groups. Obviously, it's preems. But there's also a lot of three women singing the same note and making it more powerful. - And making it more powerful. - I was gonna say what's really interesting about this song is that we have four boys who come to Mariah. And they're all very powerful voices. - Very powerful. - Typically you have one that's been more like demure. - Yeah. - These are men in and in and out. - All right. So we know Mariah is queen of the bridge. I need to hear it. Please. - She takes to the bridge. ♪ Said I want you to bring me the one I really need ♪ ♪ Won't you please bring my favorite to me? ♪ ♪ You know what? ♪ - Do you want to hear that with the backing vocals too? - I'm always so tempted to throw in the ad-libs whenever I hear that. - Feel free. - I won't do that today. - karaoke maybe. - Yeah. - There is your harmony stack. That is the church choir. - That's the choir. - That is the church choir. - I'll give it up. - There we go. That's the Mormon tabernacle choir. But the opposite. - It's not Mormon. - It's kind of the opposite of that. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's the chorus. - Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. That's the best chord of the song right there. That last note. - Yeah. - To break the track. Here's what that entire thing sounds like together. Here's the bridge with those backing vocals together. ♪ And everyone is singing ♪ ♪ I feel those snapples waiting ♪ ♪ Said I want you bring me the one I really need ♪ ♪ Won't you please bring my favorite to me? ♪ - Wow. Wow. - I mean, everyone always talks about Mariah and the whistle tone, of course. The whistle register is what everyone talks about. I think Mariah. But her voice is so much more than that. - Absolutely. - Full and all four octaves. - Yeah. - And 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 because I was doing it. And one last thing I got to play. It's that you. ♪ You ♪ - To be clear, that's the last all I want 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 to call in response. The last minute at the song is. Does it get church here? - Yes. - 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. - Well, that's not real black. - That's not real black. - 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, all right, here's my thing. All my friends who are also lonely, they know that I have been begging Mariah, yes, because I know her, to make a jazz album. Her lower range is so rich and you don't think about that. - And I'm hearing that out. - I need it. - She's scatting. - Yes. Oh my gosh, there's a clip of her singing, just with a piano and a jazz bar. And it's beautiful. And that's when I was like, I need it. - I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need that. Don't leave that money on the table, Mariah. Give us that jazz out. - Is that the grandjabum? Please. - Look, this is just for Leslie that got 20 more seconds. It would be incomplete. This is the last 20 seconds she's never heard before. That was like eight seconds long. - That was like eight seconds long. - That control the diaphragm. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Strong throughout. - Yep. I feel the vision of love. That last note I vision of love. - Oh yeah. - And how did you vision dairy? Similar. - I mean, crazy. - That last note I vision of love is one for the history books. Oh, that you turned out to be. - 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 page. She's got plenty of Christmas sponsorships, partnerships, and commercial circulating. - Yep. - You know, there's a whole complex, if you would. - Yep. Mariah, here's a complex. Tagline, it's time. Yeah, but I mean, you can see her annual Christmas show that she's now on tour. I think it started off just like a show. - My wife and some of her friends went to it recently and they said it was an amazing concert. - It's great. I went to Hollywood Bowl. - Yeah. - It's really good. Especially in LA, she typically will bring somebody out. 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 partnerships with Venmo. She has Amazon partnership now where she actually is selling like inflatable Christmas decorations. Or like your yard. - Oh man. - Oh man. - Yeah. - I can have a big inflatable Mariah on my yard. - You actually can. - Oh man. - Her with her. Well, she's like in a Santa Claus, something like she has a sleigh. Yeah. And then she also has partnerships with like K Jewelers, Victoria's Secrets. So in addition to the money from performing and writing the song, she's also getting all the extra bread. - Does she want a one song partnership? - I say it. - Just saying. - 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 country band 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 as in the Mariah song. There are no melodic. I thought that was Mariah. That was a Mariah, Carrie. Exactly. You want to leave me after you talk to 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 copyright a song title. But it didn't stop them from seeking $60 million in their first of two lawsuits. In 2022, they filed 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 won. So that's currently in the midst of the-- Yeah. 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 trying to trade on is quote, "Cari's song features a quote, "unique linguistic structure similar to his own tune." They have this list, basically what they've 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-- But those are like the same feeling. These do not have any of the same feeling. Mariah has also been sued before. Yeah. But 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 all my stuff here, the receipts, which is why you don't hear about any crazy settlements on her end. Good for her. Unpresident's 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. 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." He says, "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 almost every year, he gets called 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, "My memory may be a little different from Mariahs." So in 2013, things get a little beefy. Mariahs tells Axis 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." 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 evoking Christmas for all of us, but it's also evoking the story of her life then, when she hears it. So maybe she's starting, when I read that, it was very poignant to me because I maybe realized that if she had the strength and power that she did in her later years at the time, might have been a different song. She might have made a different choice. She 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. You would have seen hip hop Mariah later, absolutely. 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 this 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 lets 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 of the song. Which made him sound even better to the lambo. I'm sure that really helps. Some little girls are going to play what I, "Hey, it's Tommy Motoli. I'll tell you what to do." He probably didn't do him so many favors with that, but clearly. People just have to read the line of notes. There's never been a moment where he wasn't credited as a songwriter, like 50/50, a grand end, how 50/50 is split, you know, whatever. Who did what? But yeah, exactly. But that's always been the case. We don't just have to pay more attention. Yeah. 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. It holds the record for the highest charting holiday song on 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 Ten 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? What 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 going to be "Christmas Cannon" after that. The Dark Los. The Dark Los. And I have to believe it. I mean, granted, my personal who's canon includes in "Sync's America's Happy Holidays" and "A Day of the Christmas of a Destiny's 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. No one doesn't know this song. It's such an indelible part of the holidays. It's absolutely true. Absolutely true. And make sure that Mariah stays relevant forever. Yes. She will never go away. How about you, Diallo? You know, I'm a fan of this song and a fan of the Christmas canon. I'm not sure we need any more Christmas songs. And this is my theory. It's like, you know, any time nowadays, a person seems to listen. We've got enough. No, seriously, like, whether they're like just a random celebrity or a band or a rap group or an army. Like, when I hear you're coming up 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 going to 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 canon that's not already there, maybe set this one out. I use the example of a "Quantity DJs" have a song that I absolutely love what you want for Christmas. Basically, like, if two-live crew did a Christmas song, and it's one of my favorites. Uncle Luke. Hey. That's like a perfect song. That's everything I like. It's a very religious. And it's like, 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 spending 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 canon, maybe don't do one more song about this one too. I mean, it's really intentional. Like, with Mariah Carey's Christmas album, she's that, I mentioned, she had made three of those 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 like a throwback. And then we have the slow jam, which is "Missy Must Cry This Time". I just don't make stuff to do 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're just doing it because you think you might hit the musical lottery, maybe do something for her. Thanksgiving is not getting a lot of love. Try putting together Thanksgiving playlists, y'all, and it's not as easy as you would think. How do you do over the river and through the woods? 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 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 lions. We're going to play a game with you called six degrees of Mariah Carey, so here's how it's going to 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, artists they've collaborated with, basically six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with musical icon Mariah Carey. So we'll challenge you to connect Mariah to Jotice. You've got 60 seconds. Oh, okay. Mariah Carey produced a fantasy remix with puff daddy, but Jot, puff daddy worked at uptown records, which is where Jotice was signed. There you go. She didn't need six steps. We give it up for the ultimate lamb, give it up for, if you eat the clock big time. Leslie Guam. Thank you. I'm so impressed. By the way, there was a babyface connect, too, but we won't even get into that. Oh, yeah. Let's surprise. What do I win? Our respect. We've got one last thing before we end this episode, it's 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, I'm going to hop right in. It's called So I Just by Suria Sen. ♪ Bring 'em out, take 'em out ♪ ♪ Paided out our shades of skin ♪ ♪ I'll stay moving in, stay all alone ♪ ♪ Face them to next morning ♪ ♪ Maze from girl me golden ♪ - I mean, listen, you've got a showbiz and AG sample in there. Next level nighttime remix for those, keep it track at home. He interpolates a kid cutty lyric for the chorus, and I just love this sound. It's like my favorite era of UK house, and like 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 in 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 Sin, you've got Gets, 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. And I just, I wish this was more of a scene here in the US. What, what, what did you think of that one? - I mean, I think it is a little bit of a scene in the US. You just don't know where to go, and you stay up. - Nobody's telling me. - And stay up very late. (laughing) - 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 LA, and I just DM me, 'cause I will come there. I will support that. And yeah, what did you think, Blake? I know we have a lot of similar tastes. - Dude, that has everything I like 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 does. And I also want to say UK rap, I think sometimes gets a bad thing. Sometimes here in the US, 'cause we think it's all, 'cause 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 the Lamboly here. And as I discussed earlier, our album is Butterfly. - Okay. - That is the album for this one. - For the fans, that's the one. - It was. - Okay, what's the song from Butterfly? - Fourth of July. ♪ Therein leaves the world behind ♪ ♪ Long than for the children ♪ ♪ Children ♪ - Man, it still sounds like Christmas. It didn't sound like Butterfly. - It didn't. - It was the Chief of Birds in the background. - Oh, yes. - I guess. - I guess. - I guess, I guess. - I guess, I guess. - 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, 'cause I was like, "Oh, for the July." No, that's another holiday that needs more songs. - I mean, it's so, but honestly, the lyrics are, it's all about being outside with, you know, the person you love and the fireworks and everything. And 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 had 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 benefit. And I'd never heard it in my life before. So there's probably a divide right here for podcasts listeners. A bunch of people would 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, Merry Christmas, everybody. ♪ So here is Merry Christmas ♪ ♪ Everybody's having fun ♪ - Do you guys know this song? - I don't think I've heard that. - No, 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, Mariah Carey's all of Christmas was you with doing numbers in the UK as well. - It's true, they've made Matt a 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, slate are very British. - It's very British. It reminds me of one of my favorite videos on social media last year. This is a clip from a 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. It makes me laugh every time. ♪ It's Christmas time ♪ ♪ Get out the wine ♪ ♪ Uncle Jim's in his favorite jumper ♪ ♪ It's Christmas day ♪ ♪ People are dying ♪ ♪ Go fuck yourself ♪ (laughing) - I was like, "What better distillation of Paul versus God?" - It's perfect. - It could never exist. - Divine energy. Was that six seconds long? Literally, is that a vine? - It's not very long. - That was beautiful. - That was 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 @DialoDIALO or on TikTok @DialoRiddle. - And you can find me on Instagram @LuxuryLUXXURY and on TikTok @LuxuryXX. - You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. - And if you've 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 as a buzzer. - Thank you for having me. It's letting 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 Diallo Riddle. - And this is One Song. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)