Mariah Carey is being sued for her song ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, but with her vast net worth the singer won’t have to worry about the lawsuit.
The 52-year-old is being legally challenged by a country music songwriter who claims copyright infringement over her Christmas mega-hit.
Stone Vs Carey
Carey and the song’s co-writer, Walter Afansieff, have been named in a lawsuit by songwriter Andy Stone who claims he wrote the song five years earlier and is arguing Carey exploited his ‘popularity’ and ‘style’ and is asking for at least $20m (£16m) in damages.
Stone is claiming his song ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, by Vince Vance & the Valiants from 1989, is being infringed and has filed his papers in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Although the songs have the same title their similarities don’t go much beyond that as there is only a slight hint of the melody in Stone’s version.
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Carey’s song came out in 1994, but Stone has said his song had ‘extensive airplay during the 1993 Christmas season’ and ‘began making appearances on the Billboard Music Charts’.
Carey’s version of the song has had over 1 billion streams on Spotify alone and, last year, it became the first song to be a number one hit in three separate runs on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.
Carey’s rise to fame and net worth
Carey shot to fame in 1990 with her self-titled debut album, which went on to be certified 9x platinum in the US alone. Then her 1993 album Music Box went on to be one of the best-selling albums of all time after it sold 28 million copies worldwide and spent a total of 128 weeks on the Billboard Chart.
Alongside this Carey has been successful in the award ceremonies too as she has five Grammys, ten AMAs and 15 Billboard Music Awards. This is all before we get to the success of her signature song.
Since it was released in 1994 ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ has topped the charts in several countries and by 2017 had reportedly earned Ms Carey more than $60m (£48m) in royalties.
And this all amounts to an eye-watering net worth of $320 million (£256m), according to Celebrity Net Worth, so it doesn’t look like a cool $20 would make all that much of a dent.
