Taylor Swift fired back at claims that she stole lyrics from 3LW to create her hit single, "Shake It Off." According to USA Today, the pop star responded to the copyright lawsuit filed by Nathan Butler and Sean Hall, the songwriters behind 3LW's 2000 record, "Playas Gon' Play," who claimed Swift stole lyrics from the record for her hit single.
In her new response to the lawsuit, which she filed on Monday, Swift said the lyrics to the song "were written entirely by me." She also claimed that she never heard of 3LW prior to 2017, when she was initially sued. "Until learning about Plaintiffs’ claim in 2017, I had never heard the song 'Playas Gon’ Play' and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW," she said. Additionally, she said she wasn't allowed to watch MTV's Total Request Live until she was 13 years old. 3LW's "Playas Gon' Play" dropped three years earlier, when Swift was 10.
"I do not recall listening to any specific radio stations during that time, but when I listened to radio it was generally country music. I did not watch the MTV show 'TRL,' and I did not go to clubs during this time," Swift said. "The lyrics to 'Shake It Off' also draw from commonly used phrases and comments heard throughout my life. Prior to writing 'Shake It Off' I had heard the phrases 'players gonna play' and 'haters gonna hate' uttered countless times."
Taylor added that the song's inspiration came from the "unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life, 'clickbait' reporting, public manipulation, and other forms of negative personal criticism."
"With 'Shake It Off,' I wanted to provide a comedic, empowering approach to helping people feel better about negative criticism through music, dance, and the personal independence enabling one to just shake off the negative criticism," she added.
Butler and Hall claimed that one part of Swift's "Shake It Off" ("Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate") infringed on 3LW's "Playas Gon' Play" ("The playas gon' play/Them haters gonna hate" & "Playas, they gonna play/And haters, they gonna hate").
The case against Taylor Swift has gone in and out of court. A first lawsuit was filed in 2017 before a judge dismissed it the following year because the claims were "too." Eventually, it was re-introduced to court, and Swift was denied her request to dismiss the suit since the judge felt there were "enough objective similarities."