Walter Afanasieff

Licence to Kill was Walter Afanasieff's first prominent credit: he co-wrote the 1989 Bond title song with Narada Michael Walden and Jeffrey Cohen and worked on it as associate producer. Born Vladimir Nikitich Afanasiev in São Paulo in 1958 to Russian parents, he came to the United States as a small child and worked as a jazz keyboard player — including with Jean-Luc Ponty — before Walden drew him into the San Francisco studio scene. From 1990 he was Mariah Carey's principal collaborator, co-writing Hero, One Sweet Day and All I Want for Christmas Is You. He produced Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On, which took the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1999, and was named Producer of the Year, Non-Classical the following year.