A year after dropping a prior lawsuit containing the same claims, musician Vince Vance is suing Mariah Carey once again for allegedly stealing his hit song, “All I Want for Christmas is You,” from his earlier composition.
The same fundamental claims that Vance (real name Andy Stone) made in his previous case are repeated in a complaint he filed on Wednesday, Nov. 1, in a Los Angeles federal court: that Carey’s 1994 Christmas hit violated the copyrights of his 1989 song of the same name. Carey’s “All I Want” has peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in each of the last four Christmas seasons, so that’s no minor feat.
However, the current lawsuit contains considerably more specific and intimate accusations against Carey, such as the claim that she invented the tale of how she composed the song and that her own co-writer, Walter Afanasieff, disputes it.
In the re-filed case, Vance’s new attorneys said, “Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own.” “Even her co-credited composer doesn’t believe the tale she has concocted, demonstrating her limitless vanity. All that’s happening here is an actionable infringement.
Notably, Gerard P. Fox, who previously defended two artists who claimed Taylor Swift had stolen their lyrics for “Shake It Off,” is now Vance’s attorney. The legal proceedings in the case lasted for almost five years prior to its conclusion in December 2022 with a private settlement.
Similar to his first complaint, Vance’s latest one asserts that his song “All I Want for Christmas is You” was recorded by Vince Vance and the Valiants in 1989 and had “extensive airplay” throughout the 1993 holiday season, which coincided with Carey’s release of her more well-known song of the same name.
However, he describes his previous song as “a country music hit” in his latest complaint, claiming it peaked at No. 31 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and went on to reach No. 23 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart (which was renamed the Radio Songs list in 2014). Troy Powers has now joined him as a plaintiff as well; Powers says he co-wrote the previous song.
The updated complaint goes into further detail on the claimed similarities between the two songs, including the “unique linguistic structure” and musical components that Carey is said to have plagiarized.
“Although it may seem like a common expression now, the phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ was, in context, distinctive in 1988,” wrote Vance’s new attorneys. Furthermore, in terms of both lyric choice and chord expressions, the melody’s particular chord progression combined with the exact hook was more than 50% a copy of Vance’s original composition.
Notably, Love Actually, the 2003 Christmas film that propelled Carey’s song even farther into the holiday canon, is also included in the new federal case. According to the complaint, Carey’s song can be heard in “a featured performance scene in the mega hit film’s penultimate act.”
A request for comment on Wednesday night was not immediately answered by a representative for Carey.
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