When the clock struck midnight on November 1, Mariah Carey marked the end of Halloween by posting a video of pumpkin-headed ghouls and ghosts attempting to defrost her from a block of ice. However, her unparalleled falsetto is the only way out, as she sings, “It’s tiiiiime!” Dancing to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” amidst Christmas decor and snow ensues.
Unfortunately for Carey, a lawsuit related to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has also been metaphorically defrosted. Rolling Stone reports that Andy Stone “refiled his $20 million copyright infringement lawsuit claiming he was iced out of proper credit” in federal court in Los Angeles on November 1. Stone, whose stage name is Vince Vance and legal name is Andrew Franichevich, previously dismissed his case from New Orleans federal court last November, which Rolling Stone also reported on at the time.
The credited co-songwriters on “All I Want For Christmas Is You” are Carey and Walter Afanasieff, but Stone claims that “about 50 percent of the words” from his “All I Want For Christmas Is You” version co-written with Troy Powers, his co-plaintiff, and Carey’s perennial chart-topping version “are the same, in almost the same order,” as Stone’s lawyer, Douglas M. Schmidt, told Rolling Stone.
Carey and Afanasieff’s version was released in 1994, while Stone’s version was written in 1988. Per Rolling Stone, Stone and Powers’ song was recorded in Nashville in 1989 “and allege it received ‘extensive airplay’ in 1993.
Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” ended last year at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and began 2023 at No. 1 on the Hot 100. Even with Stone and Powers’ latest lawsuit, we have zero reason to believe the pattern won’t repeat for the end of 2023 into the start of 2024.
