Mariah Carey Asks Judge To Dismiss ‘All I Want For Christmas’ Copyright Lawsuit
Many months after Mariah Carey was hit with another lawsuit claiming she stole her famous holiday hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from an earlier song, her lawyers are asking the court to throw out the case. They argue that the songs only share basic musical elements that are too common to claim ownership of.
In November, songwriter Vince Vance (whose real name is Andy Stone) filed a new lawsuit accusing Carey of copyright infringement. He claimed her 1994 holiday smash was more than 50% similar to his 1989 song of the same name, which was performed by his group, Vince Vance and the Valiants. Vance had filed a similar lawsuit in 2022, but it was dropped, allowing him to try again. This time, he’s joined by Troy Powers, who says he co-wrote the song with Vance.
But Carey’s lawyers, including those representing “All I Want For Christmas Is You” co-writer Walter Afanasieff, argue that Vance’s claims don’t meet the Ninth Circuit Court’s “extrinsic test for substantial similarity.” In other words, they think any similarities are just coincidences. “The plaintiffs’ claimed similarities between Vance’s and Carey’s songs are unprotectable…because they are, among other things, fragmentary and commonplace building blocks of expression that Vance and Carey use differently in their overall different lyrics and music,” the filing states.
In the November lawsuit, Vance and Powers argued that the songs share a “unique linguistic structure” and musical elements that Carey supposedly copied for her mega-hit, which has topped the Billboard Hot 100 during the holiday season for five years in a row. They also claimed that, even though it’s common now, the phrase “all I want for Christmas is you” was “distinctive” when Vance and Powers’ song first came out.
Billboard reported that Carey’s team, however, argues that the plaintiffs don’t have solid evidence proving the songs share any protected elements. They point out that the reports from the music experts hired by Vance and Powers “list isolated, fragmentary similarities in Vance’s and Carey’s songs while ignoring differences and the context of these similarities,” making their findings “inherently subjective” and not relevant to the objective test.
“The claimed similarities are just a jumble of elements: a title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other common words and Christmas themes like ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘mistletoe,’ and a few random notes and chords scattered throughout these completely different songs,” the lawyers write.