Taylor Swift herself filed a sworn declaration in court saying she’d “never heard the song” she’s accused of copying.
“In writing the lyrics, I drew partly on experiences in my life and, in particular, unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life, ‘clickbait’ reporting, public manipulation, and other forms of negative personal criticism which I learned I just needed to shake off and focus on my music,” Swift explained.
“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,” Swift wrote. “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.'”
Swift’s attorneys have already repeatedly made roughly that same argument – that the phrases “haters gonna hate” and “players gonna play” are so simple and so widely used in pop culture that nobody should be able to monopolize them. But their efforts to end the lawsuit have thus far been rebuffed.