Taylor Swift will face jury trial over claims the singer ripped off the chorus to her hit Shake It Off, it was revealed on Friday.
Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler first claimed Shake If Off infringed the copyright of a song they wrote for now defunct group 3LW in 2018. They wrote the track in 2001.
Swift’s track features the lyrics: “Players gonna play, play, play, play, play” and “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”. The 3LW track Playas Gon’ Play features the lines: “Playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate.”
Since 2018, 31-year-old Swift’s lawyers have claimed the ideas of players playing and haters hating are “public domain cliches.”
In the past they have cited tracks from The Notorious BIG and Fleetwood Mac who also used the phrases and tried to dismiss the case.
In February 2018, a district judge dismissed Hall and Butler’s lawsuit but it brought to appeal court earlier this year.
On Thursday US district Judge Michael W Fitzgerald denied the request to dismiss the case. According to Billboard, he said: “Even though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence/structure.”
Taylor Swift - In pictures
“Although defendants’ experts strongly refute the implication that there are substantial similarities, the court is not inclined to overly credit their opinions here.
It has been determined a jury should decide the outcome rather than a judge, hence why the case against Swift will go to trial.
Swift’s representatives have been contacted for comment.
Earlier this year, Swift’s re-released version of hit album Red hit the top of the UK charts.
In a bid to regain ownership of her music, Swift embarked on the re-recording of her first six albums after the master recordings were sold.
Read More
The album surpassed the opening week sales of the original Red album, which debuted at number one in November 2012 with 62,000 sales.
It was the pop star’s fifth number one album in less than three years and she is the first and only female artist to have eight UK number one albums this century.
