Who is Andy Stone? Mariah Carey sued for $20 million over 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'
Mariah Carey is her own version of Santa Claus as she tends to resurface every year during Christmas, all thanks to her chart-topping track 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. But she has been on the naughty list because she just got served with a copyright infringement lawsuit for the song. According to TMZ, the man behind this suit is Andy Stone, who himself is a singer and claims he also crafted a song with the same title.
The singer claims that he co-wrote and recorded a song with the same name way before Mariah ever entered the scene. According to the lawsuit obtained by TMZ, Stone claims that he recorded the song back in 1989 in Nashville, and claims that the song got extensive airplay and made it to the Billboard Charts during the 1993 season. He also has a music video for it. Using the same title as their common ground, Stone is suing the American singer for a whopping $20 million.
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What's the problem with this lawsuit? It's bogus. First, there are a lot of tracks with the same title because you do not have a copyright on words or a sequence of words. The legal action would have made sense if Mariah had shamelessly copied the music or the lyrics, but that isn't the case. Both the songs are completely different and it's only the title that's the same. If that called for suing, the first person to have a song called 'Beautiful' could have bothered stars like Eminem, Akon and Justin Bieber. One last reason why his lawsuit won't truly hold up in court is that Mariah released her track in 1994, and has crossed the billion-stream plateau, making the American singer immensely wealthy. Now, Stone just wants a piece of it. So, who is this singer who went as far as to sue Mariah?
Who is Andy Stone?
Andy Stone has a complicated career. Vince Vance & the Valiants are an American pop-rock band with Stone playing the titular character and the rest of them being rotational musicians. Their most sustained hit track, ironically, is 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' which has managed to climb the Billboard Hot Country Song on several occasions in the 1990s. Before this, their track 'Bomb Iran' in the 1980s was considered their best work as a novelty brand. However, it just missed the Charts. Some people might not know who Vance is but he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame for his outstanding career, for notable tracks like 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' and 'I Am New Orleans' on November 10, 2010. He is also known for playing several instruments. Stone once fired a keyboardist mid-set, took over the set, and performed while the keyboardist left the show and took a bus home.
The track we're talking about here was released in 1989 under Waldoxy Records and the music video was directed by Steve Dunning. Mariah's song climbed the charts once again in December 2021, making it historical for a track to climb to the No 1 spot around the same holiday. She expressed her feelings saying, "To have another Billboard Hot 100 with a song that means so much to me, I literally don’t know what to say and I’m just so thankful. I really am thankful to all of you."