for her second holiday album, Merry Christmas II You (2010), known as the "Extra Festive" version. Carey also re-recorded the song as a duet with Canadian singer Justin Bieber for his 2011 album Under the Mistletoe, known as the "SuperFestive!" version. Background and writing Following the success of her 1993 album Music Box, Carey and her management at Columbia Records — including Carey's then-husband, Tommy Mottola, head of Columbia's parent label Sony Music Entertainment — began planning further projects. The group discussed recording a Christmas album, but hesitated, as such albums were typically released towards when artists' careers are waning. Carey's songwriting partner of over four years, Walter Afanasieff, said: "Back then, you didn't have a lot of artists with Christmas albums. It wasn't a known science at all back then, and there was nobody who did new, big Christmas songs. So we were going to release it as kind of an everyday, 'Hey, you know, we're putting out a Christmas album. No big deal.'" After Mottola persisted, Carey and Afanasieff began writing and composing songs for Merry Christmas in mid-1994. Carey decorated the home she shared with Mottola with Christmas decorations, feeling she could enter the holiday spirit and make her performance more authentic. "All I Want for Christmas Is You" was recorded that August, and took Carey and Afanasieff a total of 15 minutes to write and compose. At first, Afanasieff admitted that he was puzzled and "blanched" as to where Carey wanted to take the melody and vocal scales, though she was "adamant" in her direction for the song. In an interview with Billboard, Afanasieff described the type of relationship he and Carey shared in the studio and as songwriters: It was always the same sort of system with us. We would write the nucleus of the song, the melody primary music, and then some of the words were there as we finished writing it. I started playing some rock 'n' roll piano and started boogie woogie-ing my left hand, and that inspired Mariah to come up with the melodic [Sings.] 'I don't want a lot for Christmas.' And then we started singing and playing around with this rock 'n' roll boogie song, which immediately came out to be the nucleus of what would end up being 'All I Want For Christmas Is You.' That one went very quickly: It was an easier song to write than