Taylor Swift gets lesser known Shake It Off lawsuit dismissed – again
completemusicupdate.comTaylor Swift was successful in court last week in her ongoing legal battling over the 2014 hit ‘Shake It Off’. Though this was in relation to the lawsuit pursued by musician Jesse Graham, not the separate and more newsworthy case instigated by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler.In the latest development in the former dispute, the US Ninth Circuit appeals court upheld a lower court ruling from 2020 in which a judge dismissed Graham’s most recent litigation.Graham sued Swift in 2015 accusing her of ripping off his 2013 song ‘Haters Gonna Hate’ on ‘Shake It Off’.
His song contained the lyric “Haters gone hate, Haters gon hate, Playas gon play, Playas gon play”. And then Swift, on her hit, sang “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play, And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”.That original lawsuit was dismissed quite quickly by the court.
Then in 2017 songwriters Hall and Butler went legal, arguing that those key lyrics from ‘Shake It Off’ actually ripped off one of their songs, ‘Playas Gon Play’, which they had written all the way back in 2001.
That song had the lyric “The playas gon play/Them haters gonna hate”.The Hall/Butler case was also dismissed, with judge Michael Fitzgerald ruling that the lyrics about players playing and haters hating were simply too “banal” to enjoy copyright protection in isolation.
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