Andy Stone sues Mariah Carey for $20 million over ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’
3 min read
Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage
According to TMZ, the singer is being sued by Andy Stone for at least $20 million for copyright infringement for her hit song “All I Want for Christmas.” The songwriter claims that he co-wrote and recorded a song named “All I Want For Christmas Is You” before Carey released her iconic song of the same name.
Andy Stone says his song influenced Carey’s, according to the lawsuit acquired by TMZ. He wants a cut of her earnings. In 1989, he recorded his song in Nashville, and Vince Vance & The Valiants recorded it and filmed a music video for it.
What exactly is the issue with this lawsuit?
First, because you don’t have a copyright on words or a sequence of words, there are a lot of tracks with the same title. If Mariah Carey had brazenly cloned the melody or lyrics, the legal action would have made sense. But that isn’t the case. Both songs are absolutely different, with the exception of the title.
The melody, song structure, and chords were reportedly co-written in 15 minutes by Carey and Walter Afanasieff. According to the New York Post, it was written in just a few hours.
Carey and Afanaseiife were ordered to stop distributing the music, according to the lawsuit. “Defendants continue to exploit Plaintiff’s work ‘All I Want for Christmas is You,’ reaping great financial rewards and other pecuniary benefits to Plaintiff’s harm,” it stated, according to the New York Post.
The co-writers willfully infringed on [Stone’s] copyright in the work, according to the documents, “to the defendants’ commercial advantage, personal profit, and unjust enrichment, and the irreparable hurt and financial loss” of Stone.
How much did Mariah Carey earn from the song?
According to Forbes, Carey earns around $2.5 million per year for the song, according to a 2016 research by The Economist. According to the research, she earned $60 million from the song’s original release by 2016. As a result, she might have earned more than $72 million from only one song.
Several musicians have covered the Christmas classic, and Carey has released various versions and music videos. She even recorded a duet with Justin Bieber in 2011 and published a music video with 213.7 million views.
Who is Andy Stone?
Andy Stone has had a tumultuous career. Andy Stone plays the title character in Vince Vance & the Valiants, an American pop-rock band with the rest of the members being rotational musicians. Ironically, their longest-running hit single is ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You,’ which climbed the Billboard Hot Country Song chart numerous times in the 1990s.
Previously, their 1980s track ‘Bomb Iran’ was regarded as their best effort as a novelty brand. It did, however, fall short of the charts. Some people may not know who Vance is, but on November 10, 2010, he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame for his tremendous career. It includes hits like “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and “I Am New Orleans”. He is also noted for his ability to play a variety of instruments. Stone once fired a keyboardist in the middle of a show, took over the set, and performed while the keyboardist exited the venue and boarded a bus home.
Ankita Khanrah
Ankita Khanrah is a second-year student of the Master of Communication and Journalism (Integrated) programme at the School of Mass Communication, KIIT Deemed University, Bhubaneswar.
