The 27-year-old singer has been hit by a lawsuit by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who claim the lyrics to her 2014 track are not original and have been copied from their 2001 song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’, which was recorded by girl group 3LW and reached number 81 on the Billboard chart, TMZ reports.
The lyrics to their song include: “Playas, they gonna play and haters, they gonna hate.”
And ‘Shake It Off’s chorus includes the line: “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/ And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
A spokesperson for Taylor – who co-wrote the track with Max Martin and Shellback – has slammed the lawsuit as “ridiculous” and a “money grab”.
The representative said: “This is a ridiculous claim and nothing more than a money grab. The law is simple and clear. They do not have a case.”
This isn’t the first time Taylor has been hit with a lawsuit over the song.
In November 2015, a judge in California dismissed a $42 million claim from singer Jesse Graham, who had accused the ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ hitmaker of stealing his lyric “haters gonna hate”.
And in his written dismissal of the lawsuit, US Magistrate Judge F. Standish quoted Taylor’s popular single.
He ruled: “Upon consideration of the Court’s explanation in Part II, Braham may discover that mere pleading Band-Aids will not fix the bullet holes in this case.
At least for the moment, Defendants have shaken off this lawsuit.”
