Mariah Carey is timeless.
She doesn’t like to talk about her age, and when it came to creating her holiday hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” she and first husband Tommy Mottola were careful to give it the feel that was classic and not of-the-moment.
“I didn’t want it to feel specific to any era, so we didn’t use sounds that were happening at that time,” Carey told W Magazine in an interview for the December issue, which features a flirty black-and-white photo of Carey on the cover, shot by ‘it’ shutterbug Ethan James Green.
She and Mottola, a music executive who is 21 years her senior, crafted the tune around their apartment one night, plucking notes on a keyboard. It debuted in 1994 and has charted every holiday season since.
“I could never have imagined that it would become such a major part of my life,” Carey told writer Alex Hawgood.
She performed the song at this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and her 11-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe joined her onstage in a standout moment at the annual festivities.
“I want my [them] to have everything they can have,” Carey said of her children, whom she shares with ex-husband No. 2, Nick Cannon. “I want them to be able to understand that they can be anything they want to be.”
The songstress had a notoriously troubled upbringing, growing up on Long Island. She told W that people forget that when observing — and judging her for — her occasional diva behavior.
“Yes, I play into it. And yes, part of that is real,” she said of her antics, which included walking off the stage on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” in 2016. “I can’t help it.”