Well, that was weird!
Discussing Mariah Carey’s Christmas classic on CNN’s New Year’s Eve program, host Andy Cohen asked the singer: “When you recorded ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, did you feel it would last that long? Because it’s one of those songs that you listen to and it still sounds like a whole new song. “
“Thank you,” replied the Grammy winner, “but first of all, I hate to say it all the time, but as a writer, I wrote this song.”
Cohen quickly added, “I know,” but it was too little, too late, for the diva.
“Yes, but you said, ‘recorded’, so I just had to clarify it for the house staff,” Carey, 50, replied. (Carey and composing partner Walter Afanasieff co-wrote the song, supposedly in just 15 minutes.)
Adding a little more fear to the exchange, Carey then asked what the noise was in the background, forcing Cohen to respond that it was Jennifer Lopez’s performance that night.
Carey, whose alleged rivalry with Lopez goes back to the feeling that Lopez copied his “Loverboy” with “I’m Real”, kept a fixed smile on his face.
The situation was addressed indirectly in Carey’s recent memoirs, who described “a female artist in [Sony’s] record label (which I don’t know) ”, an aside that makes reference to his famous response in the interview“ I don’t know her ”to a question about Lopez.