Just when it looked like Taylor Swift’s legal troubles were over, they revved back up. This time it’s a lawsuit over her song “Shake it Off,” claiming she stole certain lyrics from the 3LW song “Playas Gon’ Play.” Two weeks ago, a judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit, leading Swift and her team to ramp up their efforts to fight back.
The lawsuit, filed by Nathan Butler and Sean Hall, the writers of “Playas Gon’ Play,” argues that “Shake it Off” directly steals lyrics from their song. In the 2001 hit, 3LW sings, “playas, they gonna play” and “haters, they gonna hate.”
Swift’s track goes, “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” “Shake it Off” was a huge hit for Swift, and while the lyrics are similar, her lawyers claim:
“… both works use versions of two short public domain phrases – ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate’ – that are free for everyone to use, and two other but different tautologies that plaintiffs claim share the same underlying general idea or concept. The presence of versions of the two short public domain statements and two other tautologies in both songs … simply does not satisfy the extrinsic test.”