Taylor Swift says Shake It Off song-theft accusers don’t even have the right to sue
As the song theft legal battle in relation to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ rumbles on, at a court hearing yesterday attention turned to the argument that the songwriters suing Swift don’t even have the legal right to pursue the litigation.In this particular song-theft case, songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler accuse Swift of ripping off their 2001 song ‘Playas Gon Play’ when she wrote her 2014 hit. The claim is mainly based on the similarities between the two songs’ respective key lines, with the 2001 track having the line “the playas gon play/them haters gonna hate”, while ‘Shake It Off’ famously includes the lyric “the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”.Swift’s legal team have been trying very hard to get the case dismissed, mainly on the basis that the notion of players playing and haters hating is far too generic for lyrics based on said notion to be protected by copyright in isolation.