Taylor Swift submits statement to court in ongoing Shake It Off song-theft legal battle

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By Chris Cooke | Revealed on Tuesday 9 August 2022

Taylor Swift yesterday submitted a statement to a US courtroom as portion of the lengthy-operating tune-theft lawful battle around her 2014 strike ‘Shake It Off’, which songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler reckon rips off their 2001 song ‘Playas Gon Play’. Swift’s statement describes how she came up with the lyrics for her track, while also insisting there was no way she could have been exposed to ‘Playas Gon Play’ ahead of producing ‘Shake It Off’.

Hall and Butler first sued Swift in 2017. Their tune, recorded by 3LW, integrated the lyric “the playas gon participate in/them haters gonna hate”, when ‘Shake It Off’ famously incorporates the line “the gamers gonna participate in, enjoy, perform, engage in, participate in/and the haters gonna hate, dislike, detest, detest, hate”.

The lawful action has been rumbling on at any time considering the fact that. In 2018, judge Michael Fitzgerald actually dismissed the duo’s lawsuit on the foundation that the handful of lyrics the two songs have in common are not protected by copyright in isolation.

On the other hand, Hall and Butler successfully about-turned that ruling in the Ninth Circuit appeals court, the place the enchantment judges mentioned that Fitzgerald experienced been also hasty to conclude that the traces about players playing and haters hating were not shielded by copyright.

As a result, the full make a difference was despatched again to the decrease courtroom. Ever given that, the Swift aspect has been attempting to get the circumstance dismissed for a next time, largely on the basis that, nicely, the handful of lyrics the two songs have in typical are not protected by copyright in isolation.

But Fitzgerald has so much declined to dismiss the case once more, commonly concluding that the Swift’s sides arguments haven’t seriously changed, so if he was to grant the a lot more recent motions for dismissal, the Ninth Circuit would probable once again conclude that he was being far too hasty.

According to Pitchfork, in the new court docket files, Swift states: “The lyrics to ‘Shake It Off’ were composed solely by me. Until eventually studying about plaintiffs’ declare in 2017, I experienced hardly ever read the music ‘Playas Gon Play’ and had never ever read of that track or the team 3LW”.

So, her ‘Shake It Off’ lyrics could not have been motivated by the previously tune. In its place, she provides, people lyrics “drew partly on experiences in my lifestyle and, in certain, unrelenting general public scrutiny of my personalized existence, ‘clickbait’ reporting, general public manipulation, and other types of damaging individual criticism which I discovered I just required to shake off and aim on my music”.

“With ‘Shake It Off’”, she goes on, “I wanted to deliver a comedic, empowering approach to aiding people really feel much better about unfavorable criticism via tunes, dance, and the private independence enabling 1 to just shake off the detrimental criticism”.

And, as for the two vital phrases shared by ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Playas Gon Play’, nicely, as her legal professionals have frequently argued, they are rather popular phrases. And, Swift writes in the new court docket submitting, she experienced earlier heard both individuals phrases in several distinct spots.

“Prior to composing ‘Shake It Off’, I experienced listened to the phrases ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate’ uttered numerous instances to express the strategy that one particular can or really should shrug off negativity”, she writes. “I remember listening to phrases about gamers participate in and haters hate stated collectively by other little ones even though attending university in Wyomissing Hills, and in high school in Hendersonville”.

“These phrases were akin to other typically utilised sayings”, she reckons, “like ‘don’t loathe the playa, dislike the game’, ‘take a chill pill’, and ‘say it, really do not spray it’. I drew on individuals commonly employed player and hater phrases in producing the lyrics ‘Cause the gamers gonna play, perform, participate in, engage in, participate in / And the haters gonna dislike, despise, loathe, dislike, hate’”.

Returning to the argument that she had by no means heard ‘Playas Gon Play’ till 2017, she provides that her mom and dad managed what media she consumed right up until her early teenagers, meaning she did not watch issues like MTV’s ‘TRL’ display right up until “I was about thirteen decades old”, ie immediately after the release of the 3LW monitor.

“None of the CDs I listened to as a boy or girl, or following that, were being by 3LW”, she goes on. “I have in no way heard the track ‘Playas Gon Play’ on the radio, on tv, or in any film”. And if you feel that possibly she was exposed to 3LW generally or ‘Playas Gon Play’ especially simply because they appeared on the US versions of the Now! albums in the early 2000s, properly, “I do not individual and have never ever listened to the albums ‘Now Which is What I Call New music! 6’ or ‘Now Which is What I Simply call Phone Tunes! 7’”.

So there you go! The circumstance, as they say, continues.