Worst Holiday Tradition Ever: Mariah Carey Faces Another Copyright Lawsuit Over Her Christmas Hit
This is not the holiday gift Mariah Carey was looking for.
Just in time for #MariahSZN to officially kick off, the superstar singer is facing legal action centered around her biggest hit. According to NBC News, on Wednesday in California district court, Andy Stone filed a copyright lawsuit over “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Alongside his co-writer Troy Powers, the country singer is claiming that Carey copied the holiday hit from his band, Vince Vance and the Valiants. They released a popular country ballad titled “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in 1989. He is asking for $20 million in damages and also names Carey’s co-writer Walter Afanasieff, Sony Music and Universal Music Group in the suit.
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Stone’s suit alleges that Carey’s song, which is a frequent No. 1 hit during the holiday season, is “a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.” Previous cases, for example, the one recently brought against pop star Ed Sheeran, tell us that these types of copyright infringement lawsuits are extremely hard to prove.
In his case, Sheeran was sued by the family of Ed Townsend, co-writer of the Marvin Gaye classic “Let’s Get it On.” They claimed that the singer copied his hit “Thinking Out Loud” from Gaye’s hit. Sheeran argued that “most pop songs are built on building blocks that have been freely available for hundreds of years.” The Divide artist won his case because there’s a lot of truth in that statement. All music, regardless of genre, starts with basic chords and harmonies.
Even if there are similarities between both versions of “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” there are likely plenty of older holiday songs that have the same sentiments and chords. Stone has to prove that Carey and Afanasieff specifically copied his song.
Stone previously filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Grammy winner in 2022 in a New Orleans court, but ended up withdrawing that claim. It will be interesting to see if the composers and music companies ultimately decide to settle with Stone just to avoid this becoming a constant issue every year.
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