The back and forth continues on the song-theft legal battle. The notable singer and songwriter Taylor Swift supported herself as the only writer of her 2014 hit song “Shake It Off” as a response to a legal process claiming she wrongfully copied some of the lyrics.
In the early 2000’s, an all girls band called 3LW performed a song called Playas Gon’ Play, which was written by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler. Swifts co-authors then filed the lawsuit in 2017, accusing Taylor of plagiarizing their lyrics.
Copyright Claim
They found a weird similarity between the hip hop groups lyrics “playas they gon’ play and haters they gonna hate.” And Taylor’s lyrics “playas gonna play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate.” Swift and the other defendants argued that the phrase “Playas, they gonna play/And haters, they gonna hate” is not authorized to copyright protection. It is only one short phrase and short phrases are not afforded protection under the Copyright Act.
Taylor quickly stated that her inspiration for the song came from her personal life. She used public manipulation, negativity, criticism and so many more factors from her life. She even revealed this in an interview with Rolling Stone back in August 2014 saying. “I’ve had every part of my life dissected.
When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it.
Above all, the singer repeated that she’d never actually heard of 3LW. Apparently, she wasn’t allowed to watch TRL until she was 13. She said she never heard of the song. Believe it or not that the first time she actually heard the song was after the claim was made.
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