Mariah Carey sued for $20M over ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ nearly 30 years later
All he wants is a cool $20 million.
Mariah Carey is being sued by a Louisiana songwriter for copyright infringement in relation to her Christmas anthem, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Yes, the one played ad nauseam starting every October, the BBC reports.
Andy Stone — who under the pseudonym Vince Vance performs with the band Vince Vance and the Valiants — is seeking at least $20 million in damages, according to the outlet.
He insists that five-time Grammy winner Carey, 53, and co-writer Walter Afanasieff — as well as Sony Music Entertainment — exploited Stone’s “popularity” and “style,” and that he wrote a song with the identical title in 1989, five years prior to the release of Carey’s, the outlet reports.
Stone claims the three parties “knowingly, willfully, and intentionally engaged in a campaign” to infringe copyright, resulting in “undeserved profits,” in part because he never afford them permission to use his song for any purpose, including “the creation of a derivative work,” according to the BBC.
Why Stone only initiated contact with the singer in 2021 — and as a result brought forth the lawsuit now — nearly 30 years after the release of Carey’s song, is unclear. He said that an agreement never resulted from last year’s contact.
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