She may go on too many dates, stay out too late, and make moves up as she goes, but Taylor Swift draws the line at accusations that she plagiarises her music. Her 2014 bop 'Shake It Off' has raised a few eyebrows as of late, landing the singer with a lawsuit.
Swifties, you might wanna cover your eyes for this, but yep, it's true. Taylor Swift is being sued. Songwriters Nathan Butler and Sean Hall are suing the singer over the song 'Shake It Off' which currently has over 500 million streams on Spotify.
Back in 2017 the songwriters accused Swift of the same thing and the case went on to be dismissed by a judge, but has been reopened due to premature dismissal.
Butler and Hall believe Swift is guilty of plagiarising the song they wrote for band 3LS called 'Playas Gon' Play' which includes a refrain "players gon' play, haters gon' hate".
Honestly, we see where Swift is coming from when she claims in a sworn statement submitted to court quoted by Billboard that she "heard the phrases 'players gonna play' and 'haters gonna hate' uttered countless times to express the idea that one can or should shrug off negativity".
Unwaveringly, Swift's response was "The lyrics to Shake It Off were written entirely by me". Swift has been the subject of controversy over the last few years, including a feud with rapper Kanye West and his now ex, Kim Kardashian.
She goes on to describe her understandable inspiration for those lyrics "In writing the lyrics, I drew partly on experiences in my life and, in particular, unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life, ‘clickbait’ reporting, public manipulation, and other forms of negative personal criticism which I learned I just needed to shake off and focus on my music".
In the motion filed by Swift in an effort to avoid going to trial, her attorney is quoted as saying "It is, unfortunately, not unusual for a hit song to be met by litigants hoping for a windfall based on tenuous claims that their own song was copied".
Hopefully this case is one she can 'Shake Off'. Har har.
