Andy Stone, a country music artist, filed a copyright lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming that Carey had stolen his identically named song from his band, Vince Vance and the Valiants.
Just in time for the holidays, Mariah Carey is facing a copyright lawsuit once more about her popular 1994 song “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Andy Stone, a country music artist, filed a copyright case in a California district court on Wednesday, claiming that Carey and his band, Vince Vance and the Valiants, had plagiarized his song of the same name.
According to court documents, Stone withdrew a related complaint for the same music from a federal court in Louisiana last year.
Troy Powers, with whom Stone co-wrote his rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” was also sued by Stone in 1988.
In addition, Sony Music and Universal Music Group are named in the lawsuit, along with Walter Afanasieff, who co-wrote the song with Carey.
The complaint claims that Carey plagiarized the “compositional structure of an extended comparison between a loved one and trappings of seasonal luxury, and further includes several of Plaintiffs’ lyrical phrases.”
A request for response from Carey’s attorneys was not immediately answered. Afanasieff’s lawyer declined to respond right away. Requests for response from Sony and Universal Music Group’s media contacts were also not immediately answered.
The plaintiffs claimed in their lawsuit that Vince Vance and the Valiants were well-known across the country in the 1990s after their song “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became a big hit. The band even secured appearances at the White House in 1994 and 1995 as a result of the song’s success.
Stone and Powers’ song, which they claim Carey plagiarized, has “a unique linguistic structure where a person, disillusioned with expensive gifts and seasonal comforts, wants to be with their loved one,” according to the lawsuit.
Their claim is that Carey plagiarized not only the lines and words but also “the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook,” which “was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”
According to the lawsuit, Carey’s rendition of the song has been at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart each year since 2019.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs demand at least $20 million in damages, arguing that Carey’s enormous success with “All I Want for Christmas Is You” sprang from their original concept.
