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Taylor Swift is declaring that she did not infringe upon another song’s copyright, following the 2017 lawsuit by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, insisting that the singer was copying their 2001 song Playas Gon‘ Play for her hit song ‘Shake It Off.’
The 32-year-old musician, who was recently celebrating Selena Gomez’s 30th birthday, submitted a sworn declaration in which she states that she wrote her popular song “entirely” and had not heard the 2001 track before, in light of the accusations.
“The lyrics to Shake It Off were written entirely by me,” Taylor said in her declaration. “Until learning about Plaintiffs‘ claim in 2017, I had never heard the song Playas Gon’ Play and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW.”
Taylor also explained that it would have been impossible for her to know about the song, as her parents did not allow her to watch “(MTV’s countdown show) TRL until I was about 13 years old.”
Her legal team detailed that some of the accusations can be easily seen as coincidence, as the similar phrases in both tracks, “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” were commonly used and Taylor might have heard them on the school playground without ever having to listen to the song.
Taylor even said that she brought a “haters gonna hate” T-shirt from Urban Outfitters in 2013,” and these phrases were “akin to other commonly used sayings like ‘don’t hate the playa, hate the game,’ ‘take a chill pill,’ and ‘say it, don’t spray it’... I was struck by messages that people prone to doing something will do it, and the best way to overcome it is to shrug it off and keep living.”
The legal case has continued for five years, with Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald stating that the case should be brought before a jury, however a date has not yet been set. Meanwhile Taylor’s lawyer Peter Anderson says that a trial is not warranted as further evidence proves her innocence.