Pop superstar Taylor Swift has shaken off the latest lawsuit.
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Swift had been sued by the songwriters 3LW for her song “Shake It Off” but now that lawsuit has been dropped.
Swift had denied ever hearing the 3LW song “Playas Gon’ Play,” saying her lyrics for her seminal pop smash “Shake It Off” were “written entirely by me.”
3LW had previously claimed that Swift copied their lyrics for her 2014 single. But now, as of Monday (December 9), that suit has been dropped. A trial for the case had been slated to start in January.
According to The Guardian, the papers filed Monday did not mention if there was a settlement. Added the outlet, “Sean Hall and Nathan Butler [the songwriters for the 3LW song] told a Los Angeles federal judge they will dismiss their 2017 case with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled.”
In Swift’s “Shake It Off” single, she sings, The players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
In Hall and Butler’s song, “Playas Gon’ Play,” the songwriters wrote, playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate. The song was performed by 3LW, an R&B group. It was released on the 2000 album and even charted on the Billboard Hot 100.
Hall and Butler’s case had been dismissed in 2018, with a judge saying the lyrics were “too banal” to warrant a plagiarism suit. But in 2021, the case was brought back via an appeal.
“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,” said Swift previously,
She added that she heard the phrases “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” commonly to “express the idea that one can or should shrug off negativity.”
Even Swift’s mother, Andrea Swift, chimed in, filing a statement that said she “carefully monitored both the television [Swift] watched and the music she heard.”
Hall and Butler had asked for an unspecified amount of damages.
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