Taylor Swift‘s final effort to avoid going to trial in a copyright lawsuit about her song “Shake It Off” has been rejected, Rolling Stone reported on Sept. 13. In December 2021, US District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald rejected Swift’s request for a summary judgment in her favor, and the judge rejected her motion to reconsider on Sept. 12, meaning Swift will have to go to trial in January 2023.
“The motion for reconsideration is denied,” Judge Fitzgerald said during a Los Angeles hearing, per Rolling Stone. “I don’t think it meets the standard for reconsideration, and even if it did, and I was approaching it again on the merits, I still think there’s a genuine issue of material fact in part because of the expert opinion.” A rep for Swift did not immediately respond to POPSUGAR’s request for comment.
Swift is being sued by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who wrote the 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play” for the group 3LW. They also sued Swift back in 2017 for the same reason, though a judge dismissed the case at that time.
Swift previously denied plagiarizing any part of her hit song “Shake It Off,” filing a motion on Aug. 8 asserting that she had never heard of 3LW before their lawsuit. “The lyrics to ‘Shake It Off’ were written entirely by me,” Swift wrote in the declaration, first shared by Billboard. “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.”
She went on to elaborate on the inspiration behind her song, writing that “prior to writing ‘Shake It Off,'” she had “heard the phrases ‘players gonna play’ and ‘haters gonna hate’ uttered countless times to express the idea that one can or should shrug off negativity. I recall hearing phrases about players play and haters hate stated together by other children while attending school in Wyomissing Hills, and in high school in Hendersonville,” she added, noting that “I do not own and have never listened to the albums ‘Now That’s What I Call Music! 6’ or ‘Now That’s What I Call Call Music! 7.'”
The “Folklore” singer, who came under fire earlier in July for a different reason – topping a list of celebrity private-jet users – has also been steadily rerecording and rereleasing her music over the past few years. Most recently, “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” appeared in “DC: League of Super-Pets,” out on July 28. So far this summer, Swift has also appeared on stage with Haim and released a new song called “Carolina” for the movie “Where the Crawdads Sing.” On Aug. 28, while accepting the award for video of the year at the 2022 MTV VMAs, Swift announced that her next album, “Midnights” – which tells the story of “13 sleepless nights,” per her Instagram announcement – is coming in October.