It looks like Taylor Swift might not be able to shake this off.
The 11-time Grammy Award winner finally addressed the 2017 copyright lawsuit which accuses her of stealing the lyrics to her hit 2014 track, “Shake It Off,” which earned her three Grammy nominations.
The lawsuit was originally filed by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who claim the 32-year-old stole lyrics from 3LW’s 2001 hit song “Playas Gon’ Play” to write “Shake It Off.”
In court documents seen by Billboard, Swift claimed she had “never heard” the track she is accused of plagiarizing, and said, “the lyrics to ‘Shake It Off’ were written entirely by me.”
“In writing the lyrics, I drew partly on experiences in my life and, in particular, unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life, ‘clickbait’ reporting, public manipulation, and other forms of negative personal criticism which I learned I just needed to shake off and focus on my music,” the singer wrote, according to the outlet.
Songwriters Hall and Butler claim that Swift lifted the “Playas gon’ play / And haters, they gon’ hate” lines from their 2001 song to write 2014’s song with “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
The “Lover” singer also argued that the lyric “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” are not uncommon, and said she heard them being used throughout her childhood, much like the “sayings like ‘don’t hate the playa, hate the game,'” and ‘”take a chill pill,'” she added.
“I recall hearing phrases about players play and haters hate stated together by other children while attending school in Wyomissing Hills, and in high school in Hendersonville,,” she wrote in the docs.
“The first time I ever heard the song was after this claim was made,” Swift said of 3LW’s 2001 track.
