All Mariah Carey wants for Christmas is not to get sued again.
The singer is facing her second lawsuit from songwriter Andy Stone over an alleged copyright infringement with her hit holiday song “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Stone released a similar song with the same title in 1989, and it reached No. 52 in the US country singles chart in 1994, the same year that Carey’s song was recorded and released.
According to the lawsuit, Stone claims that Carey “has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own. 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.”
Stone sued Carey last year for the same thing, but in this new version of the lawsuit, he adds more allegations to the similarity of the two songs.
“The phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ may seem like a common parlance today, in 1988 it was, in context, distinctive,” the lawsuit claims. “Moreover, the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”
Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the past four holiday seasons.
