Mariah Carey did not copy All I Want For Christmas Is You from earlier hit, judge rules

LOS ANGELES – All I Want For Christmas Is You (1994), the perennial hit song by American singer Mariah Carey that has become a holiday earworm for the ages, was not stolen from other songwriters, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled on March 19.

In addition to dismissing the music copyright case, Judge Monica Ramirez Almadani ordered the two songwriters who filed the lawsuit to pay at least part of the lawyers’ fees for Carey and Walter Afanasieff, her co-writer and a co-defendant.

The lawsuit, which sought US$20 million (S$26 million) in damages, relied on music experts who claimed “similarities in isolation”, the judge found, but who failed to put those similarities in the context of the entire song. The judge said the plaintiffs had not met the burden of showing substantial similarities.

The plaintiffs – Andy Stone, who uses the stage name Vince Vance, and Troy Powers – wrote the song in 1988, court documents show. Their song, also called All I Want For Christmas Is You, was recorded by American country-pop band Vince Vance & The Valiants and released in 1989.

It became a hit, appearing on Billboard’s Hot Country chart in 1994 and returning to the chart multiple times in the 1990s.

Carey’s song of the same name was released in late 1994 on her Christmas album, Merry Christmas.

In the lawsuit, lawyers for Stone and Powers said the close timing of the success of the earlier song and Carey’s release “points to the overwhelming likelihood that Carey and Afanasieff, both career musicians and songwriters, who knew the importance of charting on Billboard, had access to the Vance work”.

The lawsuit said the Vance song “contains a unique linguistic structure where a person, disillusioned with expensive gifts and seasonal comforts, wants to be with their loved one” and writes to Santa Claus.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs also said that Carey, 55, and Afanasieff, 67, should have sought a licence or other permission from Stone and Powers because of that “unique and original” two-part sequence.

The lyrical phrase “All I want for Christmas is you” is at the end of every verse throughout the Vance song, and that phrase also appears throughout Carey’s song, the lawsuit said. It also said her song used more than 50 per cent of Vance’s work, in the lyrics and the chords.

Lawyers for Carey and Afanasieff said the music and lyrics of the two songs were completely different.

They said the lawsuit was “absurdly relying on” references “to snow, mistletoe, presents under Christmas trees and wanting a loved one for Christmas” that appear in both songs. They said that “the human condition, and the need for the company of another above all else at Christmastime” were not themes that were protectable by copyright.

The judge heard testimony from two expert musicologists for each side, but she ultimately agreed with those testifying for Carey and Afanasieff.

One of those experts found no significant harmonic similarities between the songs because the chord progressions and harmonic rhythms are “very different” in both works, the judge said in her ruling.

The expert also found that the two songs share only five words: mistletoe, Santa Claus/Santa, snow, stocking and Christmas, according to the ruling.

The phrases referring to the holiday season – “all I want for Christmas is you” and “underneath the Christmas tree” – as well as “just one thing” and “come true” were all part of a holiday vocabulary long before either of the songs was written, the judge said.

Over the past three decades, Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You has become one of the longest-charting singles in any genre, spending 65 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100. NYTIMES