If it’s November 2nd, it’s time to get into the Christmas spirit. At least according to Mariah Carey, which once Halloween is over, lets the world know: “It’s time!”. In fact, this year, to celebrate the moment, she shared a fun video in which Halloween characters free her from a block of ice, just as the clock strikes midnight. Once freed, the world turns into a Christmas wonderland and her famous hit begins to play, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.

However, the singer was also faced with an unpleasant surprise: the composer and musician Andy Stone sued her for copyright infringement and, moreover, “chased” her Christmas hit, demanding no less than 20 million dollars.

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Stone filed the lawsuit in a California court, as reported by Rolling Stone and People. This is the second lawsuit in a row by Stone, who is a member of the band Vince Vance & the Valiants, targeting the famous singer for the same reason and the same song. The lawsuit was filed in a Louisiana court in June 2022, but was dismissed just five months later. Now, Stone is back with new lawyers and more charges.

Stone is suing Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff, who co-wrote the song with her, and Sony Music Entertainment for “copyright infringement and unjust enrichment.” He claims they copied one of his songs, also called “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which he wrote in Nashville in 1989. Carey’s hit was released four years later in 1994. Stone’s lawsuit is also supported by the musician Troy Powers, who helped Stone write the track.

In the lawsuit, Stone acknowledges that while his song is musically different, it has the same title and that Mariah Carey never asked him for permission to use it and that he has made a lot of money because of it.

According to the BBC, there are 177 songs registered under the title “All I Want For Christmas Is You” in the US. But Stone also claims that the “compositional structure” of the two songs is the same. While he admits he didn’t invent the catchphrase, he believes the singer shouldn’t have used it without his consent.

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Stone’s lawsuit alleges that his song became a Christmas hit in 1993 and received frequent radio airplay, so much so that in 1994 it was on Billboard’s Top Country Songs list. He claims that Carey was inspired by Stone’s song, “given its widespread commercial success”. The lawsuit notes that Carey released her song in 1994, the same year Stone’s track charted on Billboard. The 54-year-old singer, however, claimed she wrote ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ on the Casio keyboard she used as a child. The song became a global hit, surpassing one billion streams on Spotify.

In that case, Andy Stone and Troy Powers are represented by the Gerard P. Fox law firm, according to Billboard, which also represented two songwriters who sued singer Taylor Swift for allegedly plagiarizing her song “Shake It Off. » That case was settled in December 2022, after five years of litigation, with a confidential settlement.