When you think of Christmas songs, Mariah Carey’s timeless “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is probably among the first songs you think of.
However, such a hit song–played this time every year since its release–is bound to draw controversy.
And unsurprisingly, a songwriter called Vince Vance claims the singer infringed the copyright on his original Christmas song.
According to Billboard, the songwriter filed a complaint in an LA court accusing Carey’s Christmas hit of infringing his copyright to his 1989 song that shares the same title.
Vance has sued Carey before, but now he has new lawyers and has fleshed out his lawsuit with additional details.
Is Vince Vance Out For Mariah Carey’s Christmas Cash?
Vance insists that Mariah Carey lied about how she originated the blockbuster song.
“Carey has without licensing, palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own. Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun. This is simply a case of actionable infringement.” Vance’s current lawyer, Gerard P. Fox
The lawsuit added that Carey also copied Vance’s song’s musical elements and unique linguistic structure.
“The phrase ‘all I want for Christmas is you’ may seem like a common parlance today, in 1989 it was, in context, distinctive. Moreover, the combination of the specific chord progression in the melody paired with the verbatim hook was a greater than 50% clone of Vance’s original work, in both lyric choice and chord expressions.”
