CNN | Taking on Taylor Swift - Full Documentary (2023)

Taylor Swift's era's record-breaking tour has had some unprecedented moments. There was seismic activity in Seattle. The Swifties dance and jump so much. The equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. Taylor Swift's impact on pop culture today is extraordinary. The concert from my understanding generated billions of dollars. One economist suggests that Taylor Swift through her US tour could add five billion dollars to US GDP. If you're 8 to 80 you know a song of Taylor Swift's. In modern pop times you know you have your cream of the crop artists and Taylor Swift is probably arguably the tip of the top. Pop star Taylor Swift is taking her record-breaking era's tour to the big screen. There seems to be not only a fascination but an obsession with what she's singing, who she's singing to, who her friends are, what these songs mean to her. We have a dedicated NFL camp to Taylor Swift at all of these games. I've never, I promise you, have seen anything like it. She is the biggest artist like in the world. She's just like rolling in dough. You know Taylor Swift's a very modern pop star but in some ways she's as old-fashioned as it gets. She still believes in magazine covers and performances on late night TV. She started off in the country lane and she moved into the pop sphere. All of a sudden she exploded onto the pop music scene with her 1989 album with the first single being Shake It Off and this was massive. Shake It Off was everywhere. It's actually stuck in my head a little bit. We were used to seeing Taylor Swift as like this kind of sweet strumming the guitar talking about the boy next door that she loves and then here she is and she's standing up and she's got her backup dancers and she's like you know what I'm hip, I'm cool, I'm not here for the haters. But she's not been able to shake off the controversy from that song. I was in my car in Atlanta on the 10th and 14th bridge going over the 75-85 split when I heard Shake It Off. First thing I thought was the track was amazing and then the hook came in. How does a person feel when they come home and they feel like their house has been robbed? That's how I felt. When I first got into the music business I was 17. Back then getting deals was a situation. Everyone has a deal now. Back then it's like if you had a deal it's because you fought for it. I met Nate Butler through a friend. Nate was just leaving college. He wanted to write music. So we met and we hit it off like immediately and became like best friends. And then you know of course you know not everything you write is going to be a smash. But we got a lot of placements together. We had worked on Escape. We loved that song so much that Sean produced. I feel like people really appreciated real vocals back then. People loved R&B back then. R&B was I would say bigger than hip-hop. So we have this emergence of black girl groups who are very unapologetic and they're singing a different type of song. And I believe truly for me that was the start of women singing in a very empowered way. My first pop hit would probably be No More on 3LW. So within the pantheon of black girl groups of the late 90s and early 2000s 3LW definitely had staying power. They had a steady fandom. They had marketability. They could harmonize. They could dance. They had personality. They had identity. And they had something you could hold on to. Nate and I worked on about three or four songs on the 3LW album. I think it was No More, Curious, Players Gonna Play. When we were writing Players Gonna Play we were at church and I did this track right before service. I played it for Nate and he's like oh my god that's incredible. That's incredible. Service is over. He's like Sean I got the hook. It's crazy. It's crazy. So we go back to the house. He sings the hook to me. I lose my mind and we're like this is a smash. This is crazy. We just knew. It's sometimes when you write something and you get goose bumps you don't know if it's gonna go number one but you have a really good feeling. Yeah. In this case we're talking about a song that was legitimately popular. While it wasn't shake it off it was legitimately something that was in the airwaves. 3LW's song Players Gonna Play only peaked at 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 but in my world at the time that was a big record. When I first heard shake it off I was vibing with the song. I was just in it and then when the hook started you know my mouth kind of just dropped open. We knew something had to happen. We had to take action somehow. At least extend an invitation to talk. We reached out and didn't really get a response. So I called Julian to get his perspective on it. Julian Wright is a manager slash business mind slash little bit lawyer. You know he went to Harvard Law School and took some courses there or whatever so he's like you know run it by Julian see what he thinks. Immediately as soon as I heard the hook and I heard Players Gonna Play I said that's 3LW. Players gonna play and haters gonna hate you know. Songwriters Nathan Butler and Sean Hall sued Taylor Swift claiming that Taylor Swift's song Shake It Off borrowed from a song they wrote for 3LW called Play Is Gonna Play. In 2017 Hall and Butler filed a lawsuit against Taylor Swift because they felt like those lines that Players Gonna Play, Haters Gonna Hate had come from their 2000 hit song with 3LW. To someone who says they hear absolutely no similarity between Shake It Off and Play Is Gonna Play between those two choruses you would have to be listening with three sets of earmuffs to try and really argue with that. Some lawyers we ran the situation by didn't get it because usually when people say copyright infringement nine times out of ten they mean the music. Oh there's a sample in there or you used my bass line you tried to hide it and blah blah blah. We were saying no it's not the music we're talking about the actual lyrics and the chorus. It seemed at the time that it was too common a phrase sort of like trying to trademark or to copyright what's up. Everyone uses it. At the time that was a very common thing to say like hate the player not the game. So there's also like a cultural component here where a lot of folks feel like artists mainstream artists like a Taylor Swift has the agency to take a little bit of black culture use it at her disposal remix it and wash your hands of it and say I didn't know this is where it came from and it might not even be happening purposefully or maliciously but it does happen. In the early 90s and into the 2000s you had to be edgy and you had to be comfortable in your blackness and you had to be comfortable in singing in colloquialisms that only that only the culture could understand that only the collective could understand. Player and hater like words like that it definitely didn't come from you know a news feed or country artist it came from in the hood. Check it out babe you see he's the smoothest player out of the three of us here. Hey don't be a player hater my brother. An original player from the Himalayas. In the 90s and in the early 2000s as hip-hop and R&B and black music in general was just enjoying this tidal wave of cultural influence a lot of terms that were natural and synonymous in the black community became terms that were synonymous in pop culture writ large so think of slang terms like player, hater, shot-caller, baller, grub. Scrubs was in my notepad because I was like I'm gonna use that as a title to something you know that was like a little saying me and my homegirls used to say all the time like I don't want no scrub you know that was our thing I was like oh we need to do a song you know sing you know called scrubs or whatever I give you the definition of scrubs the first line of the song. A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly and is also known as a buster. Hilarious. That's what a scrub is With the Taylor Swift shake it off case it was almost a non-starter from the get-go because it was thrown out by the first judge who heard it. Judge Michael W Fitzgerald dismissed the lawsuit yesterday ruling that combining the phrases play is gonna play and haters gonna hate does not entail sufficient originality to warrant copyright protection. The judge decreed that this particular phrase was too brief too unoriginal you know too common basically to be a legitimate copyright claim. When you're a songwriter you pride yourself on coming up with new fresh lingo phrases ways to convey an idea and when you do that and then it's it's used someplace else it'll make you feel a certain way. You don't go through a process for five six years of challenges not knowing what the end will be. Cases can be emotional ups and downs sad happy you know excited not excited just I wasn't nervous I wasn't scared we've gotten messages we've gotten death threats it effaves me. There have been points and times where it's been a thing but scared I wouldn't say scared this situation is bigger than me it's bigger than my kids it's bigger than their kids this situation affects us as a community people of color and someone has to stand up. After that decision was rendered Sean and Nate decided to appeal the dismissal. That's when I came in. Combining those two phrases and continuing with the four lyrical sequence that is similar taking the same number of syllables choosing words that have negative connotations you know haters choosing a colloquial word haters instead of critics choosing. I understand you're arguing but let me just my question was much now. So sure the phrases themselves might be common but that's not what the claim is. The claim is that Sean and Nate put together an original combination of phrases they took players gonna play haters gonna hate they put them together in that sequence in a chorus. Sean and Nate they're saying not only are the lyrics basically identical but also it's the combination and the order in which these lyrics appear in play is gonna play and in shake it off. Taylor Swift's defense coming out and saying hold on a second that Taylor writes all her own music these lyrics were inspired by commonplace phrases that were used at her school and that there is no monopoly over that phrase. I argued why the case should proceed to trial and Peter Anderson argued why it shouldn't. There have to be concrete similarities and what they're relying on are abstractions. There's a big difference between row your boat and row row row your boat. Those are different things. Players they're gonna play and because the players gonna play play play play play are completely different uses of public domain material. This is exactly the core of creativity. If I recorded a song today that began of course the players gonna play play play play and the haters gonna hate hate hate. Would Miss Swift have a copyright claim against me? If you're talking about identically copying a series of words we wouldn't have a fight with the other side over whether it's short. Well I'm just so I tell you did you just said players they gotta play haters they gotta hate are not long enough phrases to get copyright protection. Are your clients phrases long enough to get copyright protection? Really if somebody just took the same chorus that Taylor Swift didn't shake it off and use it in their own chorus I'm sure Taylor Swift will be suing for copyright infringement. We've got two extremes where it's identical copying of this exact number of repetitions and we've got the plaintiffs work where there's no repetition at all. I think no repetition at all means it's not protected. I think there's an argument with this number of repetitions it is protected. Thank you. Thank you. I think that was also a point that influenced the Ninth Circuit saying yes this case should proceed. The thing that stood out to me was more than just the words there were quite a few structural things that I saw within the composition that's in both songs. They're both used as the hooks a hook is that's the chorus that's the part of the song that everybody remembers. In the shake it off lawsuit Taylor's team has been arguing that the phrase players gonna play haters gonna hate that those two phrases are part of the public domain that they had been out there that they're fair use. They also are alleging that it's a money grab from Hall and Butler that they see this as an opportunity to make money off of Taylor Swift because she's so incredibly successful. But it's obvious that Taylor knows how the game should be played. Taylor Swift wrote look what you made me do. And then she gave credit to the three members of Right Said Fred because she said there's similarities between my song and their I'm Too Sexy hit. Your option is either to change a song or your option is to reach out to the person who wrote the song you're worried about and cut them a deal get them involved in the songwriting credits and then everyone is happy either way. Very smart on Taylor Swift's part because she didn't wait for somebody to point it out. She said you know what I recognize it I'm gonna give them credit. Clearly she understands that if there are more than a few similarities that you need to give credit where credit is due. Also shows that she is aware of how the music industry works. Taylor Swift as an artist and as a businesswoman has always kind of fashioned herself as a champion for songwriters and for giving songwriters their credit where it's due. I'm in the getaway car left you in the motel bar took the money took the money in the bag and I stole the money in the bag and I stole the keys that was the last time you ever saw me. It shows you the complications that even Taylor Swift who is certainly an advocate for her own songwriting authority is herself kind of roped into this. The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation is credit. If you like something pay for it. Cultural appropriation is co-optation, it's borrowing without giving credit. Appropriation is just outright steal and saying that it's your own. It's that disparity and that unfairness that people are constantly on the lookout for because it's so historic and it's so weaved into the American culture. Cultural appropriation looks like not identifying the originator and it only becomes popular in mainstream culture when someone who is not black decides to use it as their own or make it their own. I think a lot of people are just now waking up to the fact that most music genres that were birthed in America were birthed by black people and were stolen and popularized by mainstream white artists. The issue of cultural appropriation really speaks to the roots of the music industry which have been for as long as recording has existed has really been riding on the back of black talent. Some recording contracts still say the record company will own the master and any slave recordings. A slave is a copy of the master. The roots of these terms obviously go back to the very birth of the nation era of white supremacy. Almost since the beginning of the music industry there have been the feeling that white artists have taken from black artists and made it into something that they felt was more palatable for a white audience. And it happens in every industry, in fashion, in music, history, you name it. The money doesn't flow, the attention doesn't flow to the black creators. It is in a way hijacked by the white creators. Little Richard had often said, I am their originator. He would say that all the time and as a kid I didn't know what that meant. It didn't really make sense to me. But then when you look back at the history of some of the greats documented in history, there's such a soulful sound that is undeniably from the culture. I think when it comes to copyright lawsuits, legal decisions don't have anything to do with ethical ones and cultural appropriation falls under that umbrella of ethics. The Chuck Berry song Sweet Little Sixteen was essentially rewritten by the Beach Boys by Brian Wilson as Surfing USA. It's the same song, almost entirely. Brian even admitted that he was rewriting Sweet Little Sixteen when he wrote Surfing USA. If you look back, I think the George Harrison case with My Sweet Lord and The Chiffons, He's So Fine. That's probably the case that sort of set the table for what we're looking at now. The generally accepted story is that him, let's just say, ripping off The Chiffons, He's So Fine was an accident. It was one of the biggest songs at the time, so I believe George Harrison that he could have heard that song and it could have subconsciously influenced him. Subconscious plagiarism, also known as cryptomnesia, is when you copy something without intent or without realizing it. The way that people make mistakes with accidental plagiarism, that's just human nature. If you can prove that you independently created a song that's substantially similar to another but had no idea, had never heard of the pre-existing song, it's just purely coincidental, that is a defense. He didn't deny that he knew the song, you know, it was a big hit, but that it was just something that he didn't put together and he thought he had written a totally original song. George Harrison lost that case and was required to pay a lot of money. When you have these discussions about music copyright cases, you don't have to prove intent. That's sort of impossible, but you do need to prove access. In the case of 3LW, access is inherent when your song was on the charts. It was on TRL. Please put your hands together for 3LW. TRL was everything. 3LW and their fans here to make some noise for Britney Spears. Live on TRL, it's Christina Aguilera. Cheers, Eminem with My Name Is. Adults were watching it, kids were watching it, the industry was watching it. That basically was the ultimate playlist. The music that you connect with when you're 10, 11, 12 years old, that is among the most impactful music of your life. You know, that's the stuff that you're going to carry into your teens and into your 20s. In 2008, Taylor Swift gave an interview to J-14 magazine, in which she said that she grew up watching TRL and she was a huge fan. I literally grew up watching TRL. But in August 2022, under oath, Taylor Swift submitted a declaration. In it, she states, I listened to country music almost exclusively. In my house, we played CDs and rarely played the radio. When I listened to the radio, it was generally country music. I did not watch the MTV show TRL and I did not go to clubs during this time. I believe it. Taylor Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm. And, you know, we've seen the early videos of her, you know, playing the guitar from when she was a little girl. And she started as a country music artist. Taylor Swift also says in this declaration, Until learning about plaintiff's claim in 2017, I had never heard the songs Players Gon' Play and had never heard of that song or the group B.L.W. The shade. I have never seen a Players Gon' Play music video. Shake It Off was composed independently of Players Gon' Play. Taylor goes on for pages about the inspiration to Shake It Off and her defense. She says, My parents limited what I could watch and listen to and did not permit me to watch TRL until I was about 13 years old. The lyrics to Shake It Off were written entirely by me. I drew partly on experiences in my life and, in particular, unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page is defending himself. Katy Perry is not the only one who is dealing with a lawsuit like this. You've seen this with a lot of artists in the past five or so years with Sam Smith. Sam Smith and Normani are facing a copyright lawsuit. Dua Lipa's levitating legal drama continues. Dua Lipa is facing copyright allegations from a pair of composers who say that the song is actually based on a song that they did back in the 70s. It's more about composition as opposed to writing of lyrics. But in Lizzo, you know, a tweet ended up in a song and it was a signature moment of the song. One of the first lines on Lizzo's Truth Hurts was, I don't know if you can say that on CNN. In the case of being 100% that bitch, Mina Lioness truly was the originator. And she ended up with credit. Because Lizzo was like, gotta give credit where credit is due. Because one thing about social media, when they come for you, they come with receipts. If you have a successful song that charts, someone is probably going to come after you and claim that they wrote something similar. It's so common, especially in the last seven years since the Blurred Lines trial. It's an age-old music industry saying, where there's a hit, there's a riff. Many in the music industry today shocked by a jury's decision that the artist behind the hit song Blurred Lines stole it from Marvin Gaye. Blurred Lines was a sensation. I mean, it was the number one song in the world. Jan Gaye, Marvin's wife, immediately believed that it copied Marvin's Got To Give It Up. Did you immediately recognize the song, the similarity? Absolutely. Didn't take more than a minute. It didn't help Pharrell Williams or Robin Thicke that Robin Thicke admitted that he was inspired. One of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye's Got To Give It Up. And so we tried to get a little groove like that going. That was almost an admission of guilt. And I know if Marvin were alive, he wouldn't have stood for it. Jan called me and said, hey Richard. And I was like, I'm in. Marvin Gaye's family won $5.3 million after a dispute. But a federal jury in California said it was much more than inspiration. It was copyright infringement. But they're not always successful. How similar can two songs be before it's considered copyright infringement? That is what a Manhattan jury is weighing in deciding a high-profile case against British pop star Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran has prevailed in a case where someone accused him and it wasn't successful. Vindication for singer Ed Sheeran, a jury found he did not commit copyright infringement. I'm obviously very happy with the outcome of the case and it looks like I'm not having to retire from my day job afterwards. As a music journalist, one of the questions that I always used to ask artists when I would interview them, especially when they have a new album coming out, is what were you listening to around the time that you created this album? What was inspiring you? You can't ask that question anymore because if they say I was listening to a lot of David Bowie and then the David Bowie estate says this sounds a little bit like fame, we're going to sue you, then my interview with this person now becomes an admission of guilt. Everyone should just say their influences are like Beethoven and Mozart. Can't get sued there. Claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there's no base for the claim. It's really damaging to the songwriting industry. Everyone in the music industry is sort of looking over their shoulder and feeling like they might be next. You say I'm different, it's only to be ignored. But I think I'm better off when I was born. I've learned in this game, like, when you have a hit song, you're probably going to get sued. Let me record that real quick. It's just what the facts are. And if you haven't been sued yet, just wait. Or you're not doing something right. I don't know. The little secret here that unites all of these controversies is we have 12 keys. There's no way to write a song that is 100% completely out of nowhere original. What makes it original is what is your perspective? So I worked with Ariana on Seven Rings and it was an incredible experience. We threw it back with just taking a classic melody with favorite themes. It started over those simple, that simple little thing. And then taking it to the future, though, and doing a completely different interpretation. It was a little bit scary because you're taking this iconic song and we're literally trapping it out and making it and being like, my wrist, my butt, and all of those other things. And they could have been like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We cannot have this iconic song sounding like this. Ariana Grande agreed to sign over 90% of the royalties of that song to the estate of Rodgers and Hammerstein. She got permission from them and that was the deal that they made. After having a few conversations and figuring it all out and us all being like, man, OK, is it worth it to keep it in there? It is. Let's go. Originality is so much more about taking something that you love, filtering it through your perspective, filtering it through your other influences, blending everything together. And I think that's the thing that someone like Olivia Rodrigo does pretty well. She comes on the scene, her first song is called Driver's License. Olivia Rodrigo, huge pop success, obviously, and a very post-Taylor Swift kind of songwriter and avowed Swiftie. I'm just the biggest Swiftie in the whole world, so I tweet about her all the time. This is also the irony of the Taylor Swift situation, which is that Olivia Rodrigo, she said how she wrote the song Deja Vu. And she said, you know, I really love Cruel Summer. Taylor Swift's song, one of my favorite songs, and I wanted to get that same kind of vibe. Amy Clark helped write it with Taylor and Jack Antonoff, and those are like my three favorite people in the whole world. They're like my three favorite musicians ever. Olivia Rodrigo on her debut album, Sour, gave Taylor Swift writing credits on two songs. She has said that Taylor has inspired her, inspired her music. There's irony in Olivia doing this for Taylor when Taylor is not trying to do this for the two men who are suing her about Shake It Off. Maybe that's all Sean Hall wanted, and if that's the case, then I do understand them being kind of upset. It's challenging. This situation is challenging because, you know, it's been a while. It's been going on for a long time, and it's personal. It feels personal. Again, when you respect other artists, when you respect other songwriters, you give credit where credit's due, and you obtain a license. I definitely feel like if there was a conversation with Taylor or her team, things would be a lot different. We probably wouldn't be talking right now. We would have figured out what worked for both parties, and it would have been done. And that's what we expected. That's what we thought was going to happen. Because it happens every day. If we know anything about Taylor Swift, it's that she does not shy away from a fight. Taylor Swift has become a sort of unexpected champion of creators' rights. She went after Spotify. Abruptly pulling all of her albums from the streaming service Spotify. For their rates, which are paltry, she has taken on Apple. Apple completely changes policies that they spent months negotiating. It shows that she has unbelievable power. Which she said didn't pay the creators fairly, which was true. As a songwriter advocate, she's really done tremendous work. Taylor Swift is making big news this morning. She's bringing her music back to streaming services. She used her platform to be able to help other artists. She has been around for almost 20 years at this point, and oh my god, I'm old. She has had so many different feuds and so many different controversies, fights she has waged. I mean literally, the Attorney General is now investigating Ticketmaster because the Swifties couldn't get their tickets. You know what I mean? If you want to get something done, get it done with Taylor and the Swifties. I'm still someone who is the first to apologize when I'm wrong. But I think I'm better at standing up for myself when I've been wronged. Team Taylor versus team everybody else. The list just goes on and on. When you go up against a star like Taylor Swift, you're going up against a machine. It goes beyond David and Goliath. Think of like half a David against like two times Goliath. And this time, maybe David doesn't have God on his side. Sean and Nate's legal team had a plan all along that they were going to go to trial because they wanted to hear from Taylor Swift herself. We will ask for depositions for the songwriters, including Taylor Swift. And then the jury will be selected. And this case will be tried in federal court in Los Angeles. Yes, we expect Taylor Swift to testify. We're hoping it will be. It probably will be a media circus. I didn't say they haven't offered it. I also didn't say that they did. You know, settlement negotiations between parties are confidential and cannot be discussed in public. Can this case settle? Anything is possible. It's like it's really hard to know where your sympathy lays in these situations. But in terms of Shake It Off, look, she has so many hits to her name that giving up 50 percent of this one song is not going to break the bank. She's going to be absolutely fine. And, you know, many artists have preemptively gone through this step. And I wouldn't be surprised if they settled, too. Because the publicness of a trial, I think, is much more damaging, ultimately. And the payout could be much larger. It was a quiet Monday, slow news day, and all of a sudden, my phone is going off. Taylor Swift has finally shaken off a copyright infringement lawsuit over Shake It Off. It's a copyright infringement case with huge industry implications. The judge dismissed the case with prejudice. Swift denied the allegations, and now both sides have agreed to end the suit. No word on the terms of any settlement between the parties. The lawsuit has been dropped. It's been dismissed. There's going to be no trial, and everybody is wondering, how did this happen, and why? So now there's a question of who wins, right? Are there winners or losers in this case? And I honestly think there are no winners, no losers. And I think, ultimately, their stalemate is a win for music. Because it opens the door for each nuanced case that comes after it to be judged on its own merit, and without the noise of the precedent that would have been set if Taylor Swift won or if Shonda Nathan won. But if she would have won this case, it could have been a nail in the coffin for multiple small artists who feel like their influence and impact has influenced large swaths of people and megastars, and they don't get to see any of the benefit of that. And the folks that usually experience that are black folks. When you have black success, it resonates so much more in the black community and in the brown community. And then you have a mainstream artist come and try to replicate that. It's like, well, what can we have? Everyone who creates art stands on someone's shoulder, whether they consume that art. You might not be directly influenced by this person, but you're influenced by someone who is influenced by someone that you're inspired by. A lot of people say, you know, her pockets are deep and, you know, her reach is far. Do you know what this weight is you're about to lift? Do you understand the size and magnitude of it? I said, yeah, I get it. But we don't want to be used, and we don't want to be appropriated. What advice would you give to anyone who wants to become a singer? Get a good lawyer.