Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” might be one of the biggest hits of her career, but it could also be plagiarized. At least that’s what a singer named Jessie Braham claims.
Braham, who performs under the name Jessie Graham, told TMZ that he wrote a song in 2013 called “Haters Gone Hate.” The lyrics for the song include, “Haters gone hater, playas gone play. Watch out for them fakers, they'll fake you everyday” and he says Swift uses that line 72 times in “Shake It Off.”
“Her hook is the same hook as mine,” Braham told The New York Daily News. “ I didn't write the song 'Haters Gone Hate,' there wouldn't be a song called 'Shake It Off.'”
Braham claims that he has called Swift’s record label Big Machine and its parent company Sony and spoke with reps at least five times. He claims that Swift’s own reps have also ignored him.
“At first I was going to let it go, but this song is my song all the way,” Braham told the Daily News.
Braham plans to file a lawsuit seeking $42 million in damages and wants to be credited as a co-writer on “Shake It Off.”
Braham’s song has 360,000 views on YouTube, but that number has probably shot up since he started claiming that Swift ripped him off. The video for “Shake It Off” has been seen 1.1 billion times on YouTube.
You can listen to the two songs here:
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