Taylor Swift’s plagiarism case has finally been dismissed (Picture: Getty)
Taylor Swift’s copyright lawsuit that alleged she had plagiarised her hit song Shake It Off has been dropped.
The singer, 33, faced accusations from songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who claimed she had copied lyrics from their 2000 song Playas Gon’ Play, which features the verse ‘players they gonna play, and haters they gonna hate.’
Their song was performed by R&B group 3LW and appeared on their album released in the millennium.
Meanwhile, Swift’s 2016 track Shake It Off features the lyrics: ‘The players gonna play, play. play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.’
According to new court papers released on December 12, Hall and Butler told a Los Angeles federal judge they will dismiss their 2017 case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
A trial had been scheduled to begin in January 2023.
Two songwriters have dropped their lawsuit claiming Swift’s track infringed on their copyright (Picture: Getty)
The case was initially dismissed in 2018 when a judge remarked that the lyrics were ‘too banal’ to be copied, with Swift’s representatives calling the claim ‘nothing more than a money grab.’
However, it was given a new lease of life last year by an appeal panel after District judge Michael Fitzgerlad said there were ‘enough objective similarities’ that the case should be trialled by a jury.
In August, Swift filed a declaration stating that neither she nor her co-writers Max Martin and Shellback, had ever heard of Playas Gon’ Play before the lawsuit was filed.
She delved into the backstory of Shake It Off, explaining she wrote it about the ‘unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life… and other forms of negative personal criticism.’
She said she learned to ‘shake [the criticism] off and focus on my music.’
Swift admitted she had previously heard the phrases ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate,’ but not in Hall and Butler’s song – instead, ‘uttered countless times to express the idea that one should shrug off negativity.’
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The Grammy-winning artist went on to say that she had never heard the 3LW track because she was around 11 when it was released, and her parents did not allow her to watch MTV’s Total Request Live until she was ‘about 13 years old.’
Swift’s mother, Andrea Swift, confirmed this in her own statement, stating that she ‘carefully monitored both the television she watched and the music she heard.’
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Two songwriters have dropped their lawsuit claiming Swift’s track infringed on their copyright.
