Mariah Carey Entangled in Yet Another Lawsuit Over 'All I Want for Christmas Is You'
As the holiday season rolls around, so has Andy Stone with another lawsuit against Mariah Carey over claims that the Grammy winner’s iconic Christmas jingle “All I Want for Christmas” copies his song of the same name with his band, Vince Vance and the Valiants.
Stone, a songwriter, filed a civil lawsuit against Carey, co-writer Walter Afanasieff, and Sony Music Entertainment in the Central District of California on Wednesday (Nov. 1), accusing the group of “copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.”
Stone, alongside co-writer Troy Powers, filed a similar suit last year, but it was ultimately dismissed five months later. Like before, Stone says his band recorded the song in 1989 and received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season — a year before Carey released her single under the same name.
However, in the current case, the duo also alleges that the singer fabricated her claim of writing the chart-topping record. It also asserts that Afanasieff has contradicted Carey's account of the song's creation.
“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” Vance’s new legal team wrote in the re-filed complaint. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.”
The “Honey” singer is accused of unlawfully taking "the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook," which they claim “was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”
The plaintiffs are seeking $20 million in damages.