A California judge has ruled that Taylor Swift must face a lawsuit from songwriters who claim that the singer copied their lyrics in her 2014 hit single ‘Shake It Off.’
Swift is being sued by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who claimed that the track stole lines from their 2001 song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’, which was performed by the girl group 3LW.
US District Judge Michael W Fitzgerald rejected Taylor’s bid to throw out the lawsuit, saying that while there were “some noticeable differences” between the songs, there were enough “enough objective similarities” that the case should go to a jury trial.
“Although Defendants have made a strong closing argument for a jury, they have not shown that there are no genuine issues of triable fact,” the judge wrote.
While reps for Swift declined to comment on the update, in 2017, her representatives had called the songwriters’ claim of copyright infringement “ridiculous” and “nothing more than a money grab.”
As for the lyrics in question, in ‘Shake It Off,’ Swift sings: “the players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
Meanwhile, in ‘Playas Gon’ Play,’ written by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, it includes the phrases “players, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate.”
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While the pair’s case had been thrown out in 2018, they have since appealed and suit was revived, with the duo now seeking unspecified damages.
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Check out ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift:
