Singer Taylor Swift is facing legal action from songwriters who claim she copied their lyrics in her 2014 hit single Shake It Off.
On Friday, a judge in California rejected a bid by the Grammy-winning performer to throw out a lawsuit that says she took wording from the 2014 song Playas Gon’ Play by R&B girl group 3LW.
District judge Michael Fitzgerald said there were “enough objective similarities” between the two songs that the case should go to a jury trial.
In Shake It Off, Swift sings: “The players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
Playas Gon’ Play, written by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, included the phrases “players, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”.
Hall and Butler said the combination of players with haters was unique to its use in their song.
They are seeking unspecified damages.
A spokeswoman for Swift gave no comment to Reuters on Friday.
In 2017, her representatives had called the songwriters’ claim of copyright infringement “ridiculous” and “nothing more than a money grab”.
Their case had been thrown out in 2018 but the pair appealed and suit was revived.