Comparing the Lyrics: Did Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off' Copy 3Lw's 'Playas Gon' Play'?
By Sarah Jenkins
In 2001, girl group 3LW released "Playas Gon' Play" as the second single from their self-titled debut album on Epic Records. Written by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, the smooth R&B cut peaked at No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 and enjoyed modest rotation on MTV's Total Request Live. The chorus leaned heavily on contemporary street slang: "Playas, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate / Ballers, they gonna ball / Shot callers, they gonna call."
Sixteen years later, in September 2017, Hall and Butler filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They argued that the combination of players playing and haters hating was an original creative expression they had pioneered. Because Swift's chorus paired the identical behavioral archetypes in sequence, the plaintiffs alleged willful intellectual property theft, demanding millions in royalties and statutory damages.
Swift's defense team immediately countered that short phrases, common idioms, and public domain slang are not protectable under the U.S. Copyright Act. To grant exclusive ownership over paired nouns and verbs would effectively privatize basic English speech.
Sarah Jenkins is a veteran tech journalist with over 12 years of experience covering artificial intelligence, mobile innovations, and digital ethics. Her insights have appeared in leading technology publications worldwide.
