Taylor Swift is being sued for $42 million over ‘Shake It Off’

Love it or hate it, pretty much everyone associates Taylor Swift with her hit song Shake It Off. However, 50-year-old rapper Jesse Graham claims the credit goes to him, and is suing Swift to the tune of $42 million over it.

As the Daily News reported on Saturday, Graham claims the song’s lyrics bear similarity to his own 2013 song, Haters Gonna Hate:

Graham, 50, alleges that the chorus of Swift’s 2014 anthem (“Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”) borrows from his slow-jam “Haters Gone Hate,” which contains the phrase “Haters gonna hate, players gonna play.”

The ridiculousness didn’t begin there. Graham initially hoped for a writing credit and a selfie with Swift, but such requests were dismissed and denied.

Graham is still adamant that Swift’s song wouldn’t exist if not for his own:

“Her hook is the same hook as mine,” he told the Daily News on Saturday, claiming Swift uses it about 72 times in her song. “If I didn’t write the song ‘Haters Gone Hate,’ there wouldn’t be a song called ‘Shake It Off.'”

There is “no way” Swift came up with those lyrics independently of his song, he said.


Graham also claimed that Swift is the one who is “definitely trolling” him.

Should his lawsuit with TSwift be unsuccessful he already has another one in the works against CNN for their show New Day. Graham runs a church organization called New Day Worldwide.

For their latest edition of “5 people having a worse Monday than you,” Someecards included Taylor Swift. Nonetheless, they admit that “it’s unlikely Graham will ever see a dime from this lawsuit.”

Swift is certainly the more attention-grabbing celebrity worthy of belonging in the headlines. If Graham actually thinks he’ll succeed with such a lawsuit though, he may be the one having a bad case of the Mondays.

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